Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
The present work aims at studying the image stress and image Peach-Koehler force fields for three-dimensional dislocation configurations in a single crystal of finite volume. It is shown that the image stress field is significant within the entire crystal volume, and that the image Peach-Koehler force can be of the same order of magnitude as the direct interaction force calculated from the infinite domain solution. The results demonstrate that image stress gives rise to long-range interaction forces that are important in meso-scale dynamics of dislocation structures.