Modeling of thermally activated dislocation glide and plastic flow through local obstacles

A unified phenomenological model is developed to study the dislocation glide through weak obstacles during the first stage of plastic deformation in metals. This model takes into account both the dynamical responses of dislocations during the flight process and thermal activations while dislocations are bound by obstacle arrays. The average thermal activation rate is estimated using an analytical model based on the generalized Friedel relations. Then, the average flight velocity after an activation event is obtained numerically by discrete dislocation dynamics (DD). To simulate the dynamical dislocation behavior, the inertia term is implemented into the equation of dislocation motion within the DD code. The results from the DD simulations, coupled with the analytical model, determine the total dislocation velocity as a function of the stress and temperatures. By choosing parameters typical of the face centered cubic metals, the model reproduces both obstacle control and drag control motion in low and high velocity regimes, respectively. As expected by other string models, dislocation overshoots of obstacles caused by the dislocation inertia at the collisions are enhanced as temperature goes down.