Dislocation dynamics. II. Applications to the formation of persistent slip bands, planar arrays, and dislocation cells.

Abstract

The dynamic organization of dislocations into spatially heterogeneous substructures is demonstrated by applying the principles of dislocation dynamics that were outlined in the preceding paper. Here it is shown that the formation of persistent slip bands is a consequence of the competition between dipole formation and annihilation of dislocations of opposite Burgers vectors in the absence of temperature-enhanced climb recovery under cyclic stress conditions. Planar arrays, which are also uniaxial structures, are shown to arise from enhanced dislocation multiplication and the formation of stable dipole configurations along a slip plane at lower temperatures where climb is unimportant. Biaxial dislocation systems experience additional degrees of freedom compared with uniaxial systems because of available motion along additional slip systems. It is demonstrated that for a system of orthogonal slip directions at high temperatures in which climb and glide motion are competitive, dislocation cellular structures form as a result of immobile dipole and junction formation and by the internal elastic strain energy minimization caused by long-range self-shielding. It is shown that the internal elastic strain energy is reduced by the self-organization process. However, the short-range nonlinear processes (i.e., dipole and junction formation) are shown not to allow absolute elastic energy minimization.