The first step in the Pirouz model for mechanical twinning, which involved the emission of a partial dislocation by a dislocation source, was investigated with the aid of a dynamic mesoscopic simulation. The emission of partial dislocations was found to occur in the domain of high stresses and low temperatures, with the latter being close to the brittle-ductile transition temperature. The transition between perfect and partial emission was shown to be related to the transition between the length-independent and length-dependent regimes of the stress versus velocity law for dislocation motion over Peierls barriers.

Perfect and Partial Frank-Read Sources in Silicon - a Simulation A.Moulin, M.Condat, L.P.Kubin: Philosophical Magazine A, 1999, 79[8], 1995-2011