Interaction of a transonic dislocation with subsonic dislocation and point defect clusters

The moving speeds of all observed dislocations in crystals are subsonic. There has been a view in the literature that the speed of subsonic dislocations can not be accelerated above the speed of sound because the energy required would be infinitely large. Recent molecular dynamics (MD) simulation had shown that it is possible to generate dislocations with an initial moving speed higher than the velocity of sound in solids. This raises a question: what will happen when a supersonic dislocation meets other defects along its moving path? This work reports the results of MD simulation on the interaction of a transonic dislocation with other subsonic dislocations as well as with point defect clusters. The results show that a vacancy cluster such as a void has an insignificant slow-down effect on the transonic dislocation, while a subsonic dislocation slows down the transonic dislocation to subsonic one. In some cases, the subsonic dislocation (or a subsonic part of a transonic dislocation) can overcome the traditional sound barrier.