No Arabic abstract
Dipolar dislocation loops, prevalent in fcc metals, are widely recognized as controlling many physical aspects of plastic deformation. We present results of 3D dislocation dynamics simulations that shed light on the mechanisms of their formation, motion, interactions, and large-scale patterning. We identify two main formation mechanisms, enabled by cross-slip, and show that arrays of dipoles can be easily formed as a result of the interaction between glide screw dislocations. We present a systematic analysis of the spectrum of possible junctions that can form as a result of mutual interaction between dipoles, and between dipoles and glide dislocations. We show that fully immobile dislocation segments arise in particular cases of these interactions, leading to hardening and Frank-Read type sources. We reveal that the collective motion of dipolar loop arrays can be induced by glide dislocations in the channels of Persistent Slip Bands (PSB), and result in their clustering within PSB channel walls. An efficient tripolar drag mechanism is found to contribute to the clustering of dipolar loops near channel walls.
Defect microstructures formed in ion-irradiated metals, for example iron or tungsten, often exhibit patterns of spatially ordered nano-scale dislocation loops. We show that such ordered dislocation loop structures may form spontaneously as a result of Brownian motion of loops, biased by the angular-dependent elastic interaction between the loops. Patterns of spatially ordered loops form once the local density of loops produced by ion irradiation exceeds a critical threshold value.
We employ the methods of atomistic simulation to investigate the climb of edge dislocation at nanovoids by analyzing the energetics of the underlying mechanism. A novel simulation strategy has been demonstrated to estimate the release of surface energy of the nanovoid during the void induced climb. The curvature of the pinned dislocation segment is found to play a key role in mediating this unique mechanism of dislocation climb. Our study reveals that the kinetics of void-induced climb process is fundamentally distinct from the conventional diffusion-mediated climb.
The validity of the structure-property relationships governing the deformation behavior of bcc metals was brought into question with recent {it ab initio} density functional studies of isolated screw dislocations in Mo and Ta. These existing relationships were semiclassical in nature, having grown from atomistic investigations of the deformation properties of the groups V and VI transition metals. We find that the correct form for these structure-property relationships is fully quantum mechanical, involving the coupling of electronic states with the strain field at the core of long $a/2<111>$ screw dislocations.
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of dislocation migration requires semi-empirical potentials of the interatomic interaction. While there are many reliable semi-empirical potentials for the bcc Fe, the number of the available potentials for the fcc is very limited. In the present study we tested three EAM potentials for the fcc Fe (ABCH97 [Phil. Mag. A, 75, 713-732 (1997)], BCT13 [MSMSE 21, 085004 (2013)] and ZFS18 [J. Comp. Chem. 39, 2420-2431 (2018)]) from literature. It was found that the ABCH97 potential does not provide that the fcc phase is the most stable at any temperature. On the other hand, the fcc phase is always more stable than the bcc phase for the BCT13, ZFS18 potentials. The hcp phase is the most stable phase for the BCT13 potential at any temperature. In order to fix these problems we developed two new EAM potentials (MB1 and MB2). The fcc phase is still more stable than the bcc phase for the MB1 potential but the MB2 potential provides that the bcc phase is the most stable phase from the upper fcc-bcc transformation temperature, T_gamma-delta, to the melting temperature, Tm, and the fcc phase is the most stable phase below T_gamma-delta. This potential also leads to an excellent agreement with the experimental data on the fcc elastic constants and reasonable stacking fault energy which makes it the best potential for the simulation of the dislocation migration in the fcc Fe among all semi-empirical potentials considered in the present study. The MD simulation demonstrated that only the ZFS18, MB1 and MB2 potentials are actually suitable for the simulation of the dislocation migration in the fcc Fe. They lead to the same orders of magnitude for the dislocation velocities and all of them show that the edge dislocation is faster than the screw dislocation. However, the actual values of the dislocation velocities do depend on the employed semi-empirical potential.
Dislocation motion in body centered cubic (bcc) metals displays a number of specific features that result in a strong temperature dependence of the flow stress, and in shear deformation asymmetries relative to the loading direction as well as crystal orientation. Here we develop a generalized dislocation mobility law in bcc metals, and demonstrate its use in discrete Dislocation Dynamics (DD) simulations of plastic flow in tungsten (W) micro pillars. We present the theoretical background for dislocation mobility as a motivating basis for the developed law. Analytical theory, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and experimental data are used to construct a general phenomenological description. The usefulness of the mobility law is demonstrated through its application to modeling the plastic deformation of W micro pillars. The model is consistent with experimental observations of temperature and orientation dependence of the flow stress and the corresponding dislocation microstructure.