Indentation of a planar single crystal by a circular rigid indenter was analyzed using discrete dislocation plasticity. The crystal has three slip systems and was initially dislocation-free, but edge dislocations could nucleate from point sources inside the crystal. The lattice resistance to dislocation motion, the interaction with point obstacles and dislocation annihilation were incorporated through a set of constitutive rules. Indentation was displacement driven and at each stage of the loading history, a boundary-value problem was solved for the evolution of the indentation pressure and the contact size. Preliminary results were presented for various values of the density of dislocation sources.

Discrete Dislocation Modelling of Submicron Indentation. A.Widjaja, E.Van der Giessen, A.Needleman: Materials Science and Engineering A, 2005, 400-401, 456-9