Linear collision sequences in bcc iron and the effect of thermal vibrations

Abstract

Linear collision sequences (LCS) in iron are studied by means of classical molecular dynamics (MD) with the code DYMOKA and its binary collision approximation (BCA) with MARLOWE. Two embedded atom potentials that essentially differ by their repulsive branches at short range are used in MD. The Molière potential is used in the BCA, which screening distance is adjusted in such a way to match the repulsive embedded atom model potential branches. MD is used to estimate a direction dependent binding energy in replacement sequences calculated in the BCA. The BCA is then used to accumulate cascade statistics and to build LCS distributions at temperatures ranging from 0 to 1400 K. The results show that neither the LCS length distributions, nor their frequency of occurrence are significantly temperature dependent despite the wide range of temperature examined.