Computer simulations were used to study the interaction of a perfect basal dislocation with a {10•2} twin boundary in the case where the 1/3<11•0> Burgers vector was inclined at 60 to the interface. It was found that slip was not transferred from one crystal to the other, with a residual dislocation left at the interface. Instead, the matrix dislocation decomposed into interfacial defects. It was shown that, as a result of this decomposition, the matrix dislocation became a new source of twinning dislocations that produced twin growth when an appropriate stress was applied to the crystal. The mechanism that was described did not require twinning dislocations to multiply via a pole process.

A.Serra, D.J.Bacon: Philosophical Magazine A, 1996, 73[2], 333-43