Dislocation strengthening in FCC metals and in BCC metals at high temperatures

Abstract Till now, it was widely believed that the dislocation strengthening coefficients used in the Taylor-like relation were universal for a given crystallographic class of materials. In the present study, it is shown that this is actually untrue because of two effects that influence the strength of interactions between slip systems, namely the value of the Poisson ratio and the occurrence of doubly degenerated, asymmetric, junction configurations. New strengthening coefficient values for reactions between slip systems were determined using dislocation dynamics simulations on five representative FCC metals, plus germanium, and on five BCC transition metals for {110} and {112} slip systems at high homologous temperatures. The value of the Poisson ratio affects all the strengthening coefficients to various extents ranging from small to substantial. The effects of configuration asymmetry and Poisson's ratio are more marked in BCC metals than in FCC metals. These two major effects arise from a number of concurring dislocation mechanisms, which are discussed in some detail. It is expected that the use of accurate material-dependent coefficients will notably improve the predictive ability of current models for strain hardening.