Stress-mediated reaction pathways for dislocation nucleation in copper

The ductile behavior of metals requires dislocation nucleation, from either homogeneous or heterogeneous sources, in order to produce the large number of dislocations necessary for extensive plastic deformation. As with the majority of the defect processes that comprise deformation and failure of materials, dislocation nucleation is well described in the framework of transition state theory as a stress-mediated, thermally activated process. We have used reaction pathway sampling methods and well-fit empirical potentials to determine the stress-dependent behavior of and atomistic mechanisms for dislocation nucleation at stresses much lower than typically accessible to atomistic techniques. We have shown that a significant range of stresses exist for which homogeneous dislocation loop nucleation is feasible because the critical nucleate transitions to an in-plane shear perturbation where the shear displacement of most particles is significantly less than the Burger's vector. We have also revealed that the common structural conception of activation volume for dislocation nucleation does not apply for all stresses and in general over-predicts the stress-dependence of activation by considering only the shear displacement of the critical defect.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Boyer, Robert D. (Robert Damian), 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sidney Yip.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39550
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39550

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39550