A new approach to the simulation of Frank-Read sources in covalent materials with a face-centered cubic lattice was presented. A segment of perfect dislocation, which was initially lying along a <1¯10> Peierls valley, was assumed to be pinned at its ends on a {111} glide plane. Under an applied shear stress, this dislocation first developed into a semi-hexagonal half-loop and then swung around the pinning centers so as to form a full dislocation loop which surrounded a re-formed dislocation source. The temperature was explicitly included here via a thermal activation of kink pairs, and their effect upon dislocation velocity. One conclusion was that the critical stress for a 60º source dislocation was very temperature-sensitive.

T.Geipel: Acta Materialia, 1997, 45[6], 2639-53