In this paper, the method of discrete dislocation plasticity (DDP) is exten
ded to include explicitly the thermal effects of moving dislocations. In th
is manner, localization of heat during fast deformation can be calculated e
xactly. The thermal effects included are the thermal dissipation due to dis
location drag, the temperature dependence of the drag coefficients themselv
es and a temperature-dependent obstacle strength through a simple Arrhenius
-type dependence. An analytical solution is presented and the temperature d
istribution is calculated using a time-dependent Galerkin finite-element so
lution. The two solutions are compared to provide a mutual validation. Then
, the stress-strain curves are calculated for Al under simple shear for con
stant temperatures of 100, 298 and 900 K. The stress-strain curves reflect
the temperature dependence of the drag coefficients, since the deformation
takes place at a strain rate of 10(6) s(1), which is well within the drag-c
ontrolled regime. Finally, the temperature distributions for Al and Ti are
calculated. At 7.5% shear strain, the maximum temperature rise is of the or
der of 20 K in Ti. This is orders of magnitude lower than the melting tempe
rature, the temperature which has experimentally observed to be reached. It
is anticipated that this is caused by crack propagation which will be mode
lled by a DDP approach in future work.