Dislocations – A Brief

introduction
 Line defects

 What are dislocations?

- They are line defects which arise during crystal growth or

as a result of mechanical processing of the material.

 Why dislocations are important?

- Explains why the strength of “real” crystalline materials is

much less than the theoretical value

- Movement of dislocations (also called “Slip”) is the

mechanism of plastic deformation of crystals (Ductile vs
Brittle behavior).
(Shear direction is shown by the blue arrow)
 Dislocation is a boundary
between the slipped and the
unslipped parts of the crystal
lying over a slip plane

Slipped Unslipped
part part
of the of the
crystal crystal
(Shear direction is shown by the blue arrow)
 Screw dislocation: Tracing the spiral

Dislocation-line
direction
 Dislocation line
Dislocation line

Motion of a
screw
dislocation
leading to a
step of b

Note: Schematic diagrams

 Movement of a screw dislocation

Dislocation-line
(shown in bold)

Dislocation line moves perpendicular to the shear

direction on continued application of shear stress.
(See previous slide)
A dislocation has associated with it two vectors:


t  A unit tangent vector along the dislocation line

b  The Burgers vector
 Edge dislocation


Direction of tt vector
dislocation line vector


Direction of b
b vector
A dislocation has associated with it two vectors:


t  A unit tangent vector along the dislocation line

b  The Burgers vector


b is always same as the shear direction

In general, b is the close packed direction of the lattice

(Example, b = a/2 [111] in BCC and a/2 [110] in FCC)

 
b is perpendicular to t in edge dislocation
 
b is parallel to t in screw dislocation
 Burgers Vector
Edge dislocation

Crystal with edge dislocation

Perfect crystal

RHFS:
Right Hand Finish to Start
convention
Edge Screw
Burger’s circuit in screw dislocations
t
Screw

b || dislocation line.
Positive or negative screw dislocation?

1. Choose arbitrary direction for t

2. Draw burger’s circuit clockwise if t is pointing inwards, and anticlockwise if outwards
3. Positive screw dislocation if t and b are parallel
Negative screw dislocation if t and b are antiparallel.
 Direction and magnitude of slip is characterized by the Burgers vector
b of the dislocation

 The Burgers vector b is determined by the Burgers Circuit

 Right hand screw (finish to start) convention is used for determining

the direction of the Burgers vector

 b must connect one lattice position to another

 Dislocations tend to have as small a Burgers vector as possible

 Compressive stress
field

Tensile stress
field

 The edge dislocation has compressive stress field above and tensile
stress field below the slip plane
 Dislocations are non-equilibrium defects and would leave the crystal
if given an opportunity
Positive edge dislocation
Negative edge dislocation

ATTRACTION Can come together and cancel

one another

REPULSION
Slip plane
Screw dislocation
 Mixed dislocations

b t

b

Pure screw Pure Edge

 DISLOCATIONS

EDGE MIXED SCREW

 Usually dislocations have a mixed character and Edge and Screw

dislocations are the ideal extremes
Movement of an edge dislocation

Caterpillar analogy

Dislocation line moves parallel to burger’s vector

on continued application of shear stress
 Carpet analogy

Carpet
Pull

 Dislocations tend to have as small a Burgers vector as possible

 Climb of Edge Dislocation

Positive climb Negative climb

 Screw dislocation: Cross Slip

 The figures below show the cross slip of a screw dislocation line from Slip Plane-1 (SP1)
to Slip plane-2 (SP2).
 This may occur if the dislocation is pinned in slip plane-1.

The dislocation is shown cross-slipping from the slip plane 1 to slip plane 2
Staircase-like steps resulting from cross slip of screw dislocations
 Where can a dislocation line end?

 Dislocation line cannot end inside the crystal (abruptly)

 The dislocation line:
 Ends on a free surface of the crystal
 Closes on itself to form a loop
 Ends in a node
 A node is the intersection point of more than two dislocations
 The vectoral sum of the Burgers vectors of dislocations meeting at a
node = 0