Stability of dislocation short-range reactions in BCC crystals

The stability of short-range reactions between two dislocations of parallel line vectors which glide on two parallel slip planes in BCC crystals is de termined. The two dislocations are assumed to be infinitely long, and their interaction is treated as elastic. The interaction and self-energies are b oth computed for dynamically moving dislocations, where the dependence on d islocation velocity is taken into account. The stability of the reaction is determined as a function of the following phase space variables: relative angle, relative speed, dislocation mobility, Burgers vector, separation of slip planes, and external force. Our results indicate that the dynamic form ation of dislocation dipoles or tilt wall embryos occurs only over a small range of the investigated phase space. Inertial effects are shown to be imp ortant at close separation, because of the large force between the two disl ocations comprising the dipole or tilt wall embryo. We find that destabiliz ation of the dislocation dipoles or tilt wall embryos is enhanced by extern ally applied stresses or by stress fields of neighboring dislocations.