Nanocrystalline materials have received increasing attention during the last decades. Polycrystalline structures with grain sizes less than 100 nm are referred as nanocrystalline (NC). Their mechanical properties differ significantly from polycrystalline structures. As an example, hardness and wear resistance of nanocrystalline structures are higher than those of polycrystalline structures. With the reduction of grain size, hardness increases based on the Hall–Petch relation. However, at the very small grain sizes the Hall–Petch relation breaks down and a fundamental shift takes place in hardening mechanism. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation offers a powerful method for the investigation of...