Dislocation dynamics simulations of strain localization in irradiated steels (original) (raw)

Writing Acknowledgements is perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this thesis writing, as it gives me an opportunity to look back at all the kindness people have displayed towards me and also because, more importantly, it indicates that the thesis writing is finally close to completion. First and foremost, a bunch of thanks to Dr. B.K. Panigrahi under whose guidance this work has been carried out. He has taken great efforts to ensure that the thesis is in proper shape. I should also thank Dr. C.S. Sundar, Director MSG, for his valuable guidance, and his constant encouragement. He has been the driving force in motivating me to take up this difficult assignment. I also owe special thanks to Shri M.C. Valsakumar sir, my mentor and former division head, for training me in computational Physics. Interacting with him has always been a pleasent experience and I hope I will get more opportunities to learn from him in future too. It is also a great pleasure to acknowledge the help and kindness showed by Dr. G. Raghavan in all these years. I also offer many thanks to Dr. G. Amarendra and Dr. B.V.R. Tata who were instrumental in ensuring that my doctoral study goes through smoothly. I am also indebted to IGCAR and DAE management for providing me with all possible opportunities and support towards PhD. I also thank my Doctoral Committee, for their continuous support and encouragement. Big thanks are also due to Dr. C. Robertson for introducing this fascinating subject of Dislocation Dynamics to me. His passion and obsession with dislocations is highly infectious and it has been a pleasure to interact with him and learn the tricks of this trade. Another important reason to thank him must be for introducing me to Prof. M. Fivel. I profusely thank both of them for hosting me at CEA and CNRS for one year. I have had a great time at France, primarily because of their company (apart from, of course, the proximity to the fabulous city of Paris). I should also thank Prof. Fivel and Dr. L. Dupuy for generously sharing with me the updates of their DD software, and for training me in proper code writing. (I now totally agree that "Object Factory" is awesome. Also, C++ rocks. Totally). My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Sharat Chandra and Dr. Prabhakar for meticulously going through the thesis drafts and offering suggestions on improving its general readability. vii They have also taken painstaking efforts in keeping the volume fraction of the typos in the thesis within entropically allowed limits. I should also thank Prabhakar and Satya for their constant help, encouragement and support, particularly during those (nerve-wracking) thesis-writing days. I should also thank my friends Anees, Manan, Gurpreet, Jai Ganesh, Radhakrishna, and Shilpam for helping me at various stages of my PhD (and also for all the tea). I am also very thankful to Dr. Mathijaya, and my well-wishers Sridhar sir and Kalavathi madam for trying to keep me in good cheer and hence ensuring that my morale doesn't get too low all these years. Last, but definitely not the least, I should thank my wife (Sridevi, who now hates dislocations for understandable reasons) and my parents (Surekha and Muralidhar Rao) for all that they have been to me. I should profusely thank them particularly for tolerating my petulant and peevish behavior of the last few months. I assure them my short-temper is temporary and purely driven by the panic of approaching deadlines. I shall, hopefully, be back to my usual pleasant demeanor once this thing is submitted to the university. viii