Kink velocities on dislocations in ice

Abstract

This short paper presents an alternative model for the velocity of kinks on a dislocation in an ice lattice to that presented by Whitworth, Paren and Glen (1976). The physics of the two models is identical; but they involve quite different methods for computing the statistical sums. We calculate the same expression for the kink velocity, and reach the same conclusion: that, if the time constant for the rearrangement of protons is twice the dielectrical relaxation time, the predicted kink velocity is too slow to account satisfactorily for the experimentally observed dislocation velocities. We use our model to calculate the asymptotic solution at high stresses.