Rules for forest interactions between dislocations

The dynamical interactions of dislocations existing on intersecting glide planes have been investigated using numerical simulations based on isotropic linear elastic theory. It is found that such dislocations either repel, attract and form growing junctions, or attract and form bound crossed states. Which of these occurs can be predicted from a surprisingly simple analysis of the initial configurations. The outcome is determined primarily by the angles which the dislocations initially make with the glide-plane intersection edge, and is largely independent of the initial distance between the dislocations, their initial curvature, or ambient applied stresses. The results provide a rule for dealing with forest interactions within the context of large multiple-dislocation computations.