Dislocation Dynamics Simulations of Dislocation-Particle Bypass Mechanisms

Effect of precipitation strengthening on metal is generally attributed to the dislocation interaction with the precipitate which acts as the barrier to the dislocation motion on the slip plane. In order to achieve better understanding of critical events of dislocation motion and evolution of dislocation microstructure, we have developed numerical simulation method of dislocation-dislocation and dislocation-particle interactions by means of discrete dislocation dynamics at mesoscopic scale. In this work, Green’s function method is utilized for the computation of the stress fields of dislocation and misfitting particle, and the interaction forces acting on the dislocation. We also proposed the efficient algorithm of the connectivity vector for the dislocation line elements, linked-list data structure, to deal with the flexible interaction of dislocation line elements. The geometrical effect of dislocation slip planes on the dislocation bypassing behaviors is tested by changing the relative height of dislocation slip plane against the center plane of spherical particle, where cross slip event is also taken into account for the dislocation motion. Simulation results show a wide variety of topological changes of dislocation during motion on the slip planes around the particle, which results from the stress field of the particle varied with the relative height between the dislocation slip plane and center plane of particle. The full analysis of the mechanisms of dislocation line bypassing misfitting particle has been explained in this study.