Stress and displacement configurations in the vicinity of a void in a nanometer copper strip

Abstract Molecular dynamics is used to simulate nanometer-sized copper strips. The strips are highly constrained and chosen to mimic thin films between two stiff layers. Further, the strips hold centrally placed straight through crack shaped voids, and are subjected to tensile displacement controlled mode I loading. The tensile stresses and displacements are studied. It is found that if a copper strip is 2.16906 nm in a direction orthogonal to the loading direction, the strip does not experience plane strain conditions. However, if this dimension is ⩾3.6151 nm, the strip shows states of both plane stress and plane strain.