New phenomena concerning a screw dislocation interacting with two imperfect interfaces

Dislocation mobility and stability in nanocrystals and electronic materials are influenced by the material composition and interface conditions. Its mobility and stability then affect the mechanical behaviors of the composites. In this paper, we first address, in detail, the problem of a screw dislocation located in an annular coating layer which is imperfectly bonded to the inner circular inhomogeneity and to the outer unbounded matrix. Both the inhomogeneity–coating interface and coating–matrix interface are modeled by a linear spring with vanishing thickness to account for the possible damage occurring on the interface. An analytic solution in series form is derived by means of complex variable method, with all the unknown constants being determined explicitly. The solution is then applied to the study of the dislocation mobility and stability due to its interaction with the two imperfect interfaces. The most interesting finding is that when the middle coating layer is more compliant than both the inner inhomogeneity and the outer unbounded matrix and when the interface rigidity parameters for the two imperfect interfaces are greater than certain values, one stable and two unstable equilibrium positions can exist for the dislocation. Furthermore, under certain conditions an equilibrium position, which can be either stable or unstable (i.e., a saddle point), can exist, which has never been observed in previous studies. Results for a screw dislocation interacting with two parallel straight imperfect interfaces are also presented as the limiting case where the radius of the inner inhomogeneity approaches infinity while the thickness of the coating layer is fixed.