Enabling strain hardening simulations with dislocation dynamics

Numerical algorithms for discrete dislocation dynamics simulations are investigated for the purpose of enabling strain hardening simulations of single crystals on massively parallel computers. The algorithms investigated include the O(N) calculation of forces, the equations of motion, time integration, adaptive mesh refinement, the treatment of dislocation core reactions and the dynamic distribution of data and work on parallel computers. A simulation integrating all these algorithmic elements using the Parallel Dislocation Simulator (ParaDiS) code is performed to understand their behaviour in concert and to evaluate the overall numerical performance of dislocation dynamics simulations and their ability to accumulate percent of plastic strain.