Dislocation sources

& Multiplication of Dislocations

1
 Dislocation source
The high strain energy of a dislocation, about 8 eV ( ~ 10-18 J)
per atom plane, precludes the generation of dislocations by
thermal activation and indicates that they must be produced by
other processes

Irregularities at grain boundaries (grain boundary ledges and

steps) are responsible for emitting dislocations.

Another way that dislocations can form is by the aggregation and

collapse of vacancies to form a disk or prismatic loop. In fcc
crystals these loops form on {111} planes where they are called
Frank partials.

A Frank partial dislocation

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 Frank-Read source

There must be a method of generating dislocations or of

multiplying the number initially present to produce the high
dislocation density found in cold-worked metal.

The scheme by which dislocations could be generated from

existing dislocations was proposed by Frank and Read and is
commonly called a Frank-Read source

3
 Frank-Read source
Consider a dislocation line DD' lying in a slip plane (Fig. a). The
plane of the figure is the slip plane. The dislocation line leaves the
slip plane at points D and D', so that it is immobilized at these points.

This could occur if D and D' were nodes where the dislocation in the
plane of the paper intersects dislocations in other slip planes, or the
anchoring could be caused by impurity atoms.

If a shear stress acts in the slip plane, the dislocation line bulges
out and produces slip (Fig. b).

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 Frank-Read source
For a given stress the dislocation line will assume a certain radius
of curvature given by the Eq.

The maximum value of shear stress is required when the

dislocation bulge becomes a semicircle so that R has the minimum
value l/2 (Fig. b). From the approximation that = 0.5Gb2, it readily
can be seen that the stress required to produce this configuration is:

5
 Frank-Read source

Beyond this point R will increase and the dislocation loop will
continue to expand under a decreasing stress (Fig. c).

6
 Frank-Read source

When the loop reaches Fig. d, the segments at m and n will meet and
annihilate each other to form a large loop and a new dislocation (Fig. e).

The stage shown in Fig. d can best be understood if we assume that

the original pinned length DD' has a screw orientation. Then segments
m and n are in edge orientation but of opposite sign, so that annihilation
will occur.

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 Frank-Read source

This process can be repeated over and over again at a single

source, each time producing a dislocation loop which produces
slip of one Burgers vector along the slip plane. However, once the
source is initiated it does not continue indefinitely.

The back stress produced by the dislocations piling up along the

slip plane opposes the applied stress and when this equals the
critical stress given by

the source ceases to operate.