Dislocation nucleation from a crack tip: A formulation based on anisotropic elasticity (Q1804329)

The authors are concerned with dislocation emission from a crack tip in an anisotropic elastic medium. To this end, they extend the Peierls' concept from the isotropic to anisotropic elasticity formulation. After the brief review of the energy release rate of a loaded crack tip and of the critical loading for crack extension, the problem of dislocation emission from a crack tip can be treated using the effective shear stress intensity factor approximation. The exact solutions are presented to improve on the approximation. The incipient dislocation core and its critical configuration at the crack tip are exactly solved numerically not only in a simple shear-only version, but also in a combined tension-shear version. Computations are carried out for several EAM-metals and for silicon. Additionally, the authors discuss the angular distribution of the singular shear stress near a crack and the critical loading. It is shown that the results for anisotropic bodies differ significantly from ones for isotropic bodies.