Metallic glasses are of commercial interest for various applications because of their magnetic, anticorrosive and mechanical properties. These properties depend upon production conditions in two different ways:
· On a macroscopic scale, namely the scale of the ribbon, the quality of the material influences the reproducibility of the different macroscopic characteristics. Classical tools such as Weibull statistics, can be applied to check the quality of the produced materials.
· On a microscopic scale, namely on the scale of the first and second shell of neighbours, the various existing local orders determine the mechanism involved in the macroscopic behaviour of the material, e.g. its resistance to fracture or corrosion. Classical mechanisms can also be applied in order to describe such correlation.
The mechanisms responsible for the macroscopic properties in these two scales are discussed. It is emphasized that classical mechanisms can be applied in to order to interpret the behaviour of metallic glasses.