Numerical characterisation of the relaxation of dislocation systems

The relaxation of an initially random arrangement of straight, parallel edge dislocations is studied with discrete dislocation dynamics simulation. The time evolution of several quantities characterising the elastic state of the embedding crystal as well as the correlation and kinematic properties of the dislocations is calculated numerically. With nonlinear curve fitting it is found that these quantities decay as power law functions of time with exponents between 0.5 and 1 meaning that the dynamics of dislocation relaxation is extremely slow.