Dislocation Energies and the Concept of Line Tension

Abstract
The concept of a dislocation line tension is discussed and explicit expressions for the total energy of various dislocation configurations in different orientations are given. Based on these energy calculations, it is found that for all cases of practical interest (bow‐out segment L≦105b) there is a significant (>25%) difference between the results as obtained from the simplest version of line tension encountered in the literature and the method of the present paper. The difference amounts to as much as a factor of two for a straight‐edge dislocation with L=103b.