Effect of nanotwin and dislocation pileup at twin boundary on dislocation emission from a semi-elliptical blunt crack tip in nanocrystalline materials

Abstract The effects of the nanotwin and dislocation pileup at the twin boundary on lattice dislocation emission from a surface semi-elliptical blunt crack in deformed nanocrystalline materials (NCMs) are investigated. The nanotwin as a stress source can be described by a wedge disclination quadrupole. Using the complex variable method, complex analytic solution of stress field, the dislocation force and the critical stress intensity factors (SIFs) for the first edge dislocation emission were obtained. Then, through numerical calculation, the influence of twin size, twin orientation, twin position, twin strength and dislocation pileup, the curvature radius of blunt crack tip on the critical stress intensity factors were discussed in detail. The results show that the nanotwin and dislocation pileup has significant influence on the dislocation emission from the blunt crack tip. The presence of nanotwin and dislocation pileup will increase the most probable emission angle, and increase the critical SIFs for dislocation emission, making it harder for the dislocation to emit from the blunt crack tip and thus to decrease the toughness of materials produced by dislocation emission.