Investigations of crack-dislocation interactions ahead of mode-III crack

Transmission electron microscopy was employed to investigate the configuration of dislocations emitted by a sharp crack in Al 1100 and Ni base superalloy in part to understand the role of different stacking fault energies. A dislocation free zone and a plastic zone were observed ahead of the cracks in both cases with different dislocation configurations. The experimentally measured values of these zones are in reasonably good agreement with models of crack-dislocation configuration based on a continuum distribution of dislocations ahead of the crack. However, these models fail to predict the total number of emitted dislocations in both cases, underlying the need for better analytical models.