Dislocation jumping over the sound barrier in tungsten

Abstract

It is commonly believed that dislocations cannot surmount the sound barrier at the shear wave velocity. This letter presents results of molecular dynamics simulation showing the contrary, namely that a stationary dislocation can be accelerated above the sound barrier provided that the theoretical shear strength is reached at the dislocation core and the total energy of a subsonic perfect dislocation is sufficiently high to cause its dissociation into transonic partial dislocations.