A large-scale atomistic study of the annihilation of opposite-sign screw dislocations in a face-centered cubic metal was performed by using molecular dynamics techniques, and an embedded atom method potential for Cu. The annihilation mechanism was studied in detail. The interaction energy between dislocations, as a function of their separation, was determined from the simulation results. The results were compared with the predictions of linear elasticity theory in order to examine the onset of non-linear elastic interactions. The applicability of heuristic models to the annihilation of dislocations in large-scale dislocation dynamics simulations was clarified by the present results.

Short-Range Dislocation Interactions using Molecular Dynamics - Annihilation of Screw Dislocations. S.Swaminarayan, R.LeSar, P.Lomdahl, D.Beazley: Journal of Materials Research, 1998, 13[12], 3478-83