Capturing the effects of free surfaces on void strengthening with dislocation dynamics

Void strengthening in crystalline materials refers to the increase in yield stress due to the impediment of dislocation motion by voids. Dislocation dynamics (DD) is a modeling method well suited to capture the physics, length scales, and time scales associated with void strengthening. However, previous DD simulation of dislocation void interactions have been unable to accurately account for the strong image forces acting on the dislocation due to the void's free surface. In this article, we employ a finite-element-based DD method to determine the obstacle strength of voids, defined as the critical resolved shear stress for a dislocation to glide past an array of voids. Our results demonstrate that the attractive image forces between the dislocation and free surface significantly reduce the obstacle strength of voids. Effects of surface mobility and stress concentrations around the void are also explored and are shown to have minimal effect on the critical stress. Finally, a new model relating void size and spacing to obstacle strength is proposed. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc.