JERK, an event-based Kinetic Monte Carlo model to predict microstructure evolution of materials under irradiation

Abstract

JERK is a Kinetic Monte Carlo model which aims at describing the evolution of materials under irradiation over large time and length scales. The evolution is calculated by collecting only those events which actually modify the objects making up the microstructure (defect clusters, various complexes, dislocations), by sampling their probability of occurrence, deciding in view of the chosen delays whether the events will take place or not within a given time interval. The details of the atomic transport are ignored and the jumps of mobile species are bunched into trajectories, which comply with continuous diffusion laws. After some tuning, the increase in efficiency over a Kinetic Monte Carlo procedure which processes each jump event after another should be noticeable.