Quantify the effect of neglected long-term defect evolution

Determine how long-term defect migration and evolution alter the defect structures predicted by massively overlapping molecular-dynamics cascade simulations at the simulated temperatures.

Background

The simulations stop after the cascade and short relaxation stages and therefore omit long-term defect migration. This approximation may be reasonable for materials with high vacancy-migration barriers, such as tungsten, but may be inadequate for metals with highly mobile vacancies or self-interstitials.

The authors explicitly acknowledge that the realism of the resulting microstructures is unresolved and note that newer approaches are beginning to incorporate long-term evolution into molecular-dynamics simulations.