Dislocation nucleation in shocked fcc solids: effects of temperature and preexisting voids.

Quantitative behaviors of shock-induced dislocation nucleation are investigated by means of molecular dynamics simulations on fcc Lennard-Jones solids: a model argon. In perfect crystals, it is found that the Hugoniot elastic limit (HEL) is a linearly decreasing function of temperature: from near-zero to melting temperatures. In a defective crystal with a void, dislocations are found to nucleate on the void surface. Also, HEL drastically decreases to 15% of the perfect crystal when the void radius is 3.4 nanometers. The decrease of HEL becomes larger as the void radius increases, but HEL becomes insensitive to temperature.