Ideal strength of a polyvalent metal using a rigorous interatomic interaction

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Abstract
A theoretical investigation has been carried out to determine the mechanical stability of a perfect crystal in the presence of applied forces by applying the Born stability criteria. A face-centred-cubic (FCC) perfect crystal of aluminium is subjected to tensile and compressive stresses parallel to the (100) crystallographic axis. The total energy of the solid consists of the kinetic, exchange and correlation energies of the conduction electron gas, along with the ion-ion and electron-ion interactions which are estimated following a calculation based on perturbation theory. Specifically, the latter is obtained under the pseudopotential formalism in the Ashcroft local pseudopotential model (1966). The ranges of stability in tension and compression are located and a theoretical tensile strength of 0.4560 GPa (4.56*108 N m-2) is calculated which compares fairly well with the experimentally measured tensile strength of 0.1655 GPa obtained for high-purity aluminium in the form of a fine wire (which although not in a perfect crystalline form is chosen for comparison in the absence of better experimental data).

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