The bombardment process of a Ni cluster onto a Cu (001) surface is studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations based on the tight-binding second-moment approximation (TB-SMA) many-body potential. The effects of incident cluster size, substrate temperature, and incident energy are evaluated in terms of molecular trajectories, kinetic energy, stress, self-diffusion coefficient, and sputtering yield. The simulation results clearly show that the penetration depth and Cu surface damage increase with increasing incident cluster size for a given incident energy per atom. The self-diffusion coefficient and the penetration depth of a cluster significantly increase with increasing substrate temperature. An incident cluster can be scattered into molecules or atoms that become embedded in the surface after incidence. When the incident energy is increased, the number of volcano-like defects and the penetration depth increase. A high sputtering yield can be obtained by increasing the incident energy at high temperature. The sputtering yield significantly increases with cluster size when the incident energy is above 5 eV/atom. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.