Strongly nonlocal dislocation dynamics in crystals

created by figalli on 25 Apr 2014

[BibTeX]

Accepted Paper

Inserted: 25 apr 2014
Last Updated: 25 apr 2014

Journal: Comm. Partial Differential Equations
Year: 2014

Abstract:

We consider the equation $v_t = L_s v-W'(v)+\sigma_\epsilon (t,x)$ in $(0,+\infty)\times\R,$ where $L_s$ is an integro-differential operator of order $2s$ with $s\in(0,1)$, $W$ is a periodic potential, and $\sigma_\epsilon$ is a small external stress. The solution $v$ represents the atomic dislocation in the Peierls--Nabarro model for crystals, and we specifically consider the case $s\in(0,1/2)$, which takes into account a strongly nonlocal elastic term.

We study the evolution of such dislocation function for macroscopic space and time scales, namely we introduce the function $v_{\epsilon}(t,x):=v\left(\frac{t}{\epsilon^{1+2s}}, \frac{x}{\epsilon}\right).$ We show that, for small $\epsilon$, the function $v_\epsilon$ approaches the sum of step functions. {F}rom the physical point of view, this shows that the dislocations have the tendency to concentrate at single points of the crystal, where the size of the slip coincides with the natural periodicity of the medium. We also show that the motion of these dislocation points is governed by an interior repulsive potential that is superposed to an elastic reaction to the external stress.