Dislocations in a simple cubic lattice

The properties of dislocations are calculated by an approximate method due to Peierls. The width of a dislocation is small, displacements comparable with the interatomic distance being confined to a few atoms. The shear stress required to move a dislocation in an otherwise perfect latttice is of the order of a thousandth of the "theoretical" shear strength. The energy and effective mass of a single dislocation increase logarithmically with the size of the specimen.