Simulations of Dislocation Structure and Response

Abstract

Despite 5,000 years of metals in technology and 80 years since dislocations were postulated as the carriers of deformation, we still lack fundamental theories of dislocation substructure development and its relation to the stress-strain response in real materials. In this review, we focus on one type of tool being used to explore dislocation-based plasticity: the modeling and simulation of dislocation structures and properties. Before a discussion of the methods, we present a brief summary of aspects of dislocation theory that are critical to understanding plasticity. We then review three approaches to modeling and simulating dislocation properties at the mesoscale: discrete dislocation dynamics, phase-field dislocation methods, and continuous dislocation theory. We discuss the power and limitations of the methods when applied to real-world problems.