Towards understanding of heat effects in metallic glasses on the basis of macroscopic shear elasticity.

It is shown that all heat effects taking place upon annealing of a metallic glass within the glassy and supercooled liquid states, i.e. heat release below the glass transition temperature and heat absorption above it, as well as crystallization-induced heat release, are related to the macroscopic shear elasticity. The underlying physical reason can be understood as relaxation in the system of interstitialcy-type "defects" (elastic dipoles) frozen-in from the melt upon glass production.