defect nucleation

The objective of this paper is to examine the instability characteristics of both a bulk FCC crystal  and a (100) surface of an FCC crystal under uniaxial stretching along a <100> direction using an atomistic-based nonlocal instability criterion.  By comparison to benchmark atomistic simulations, we demonstrate that for both the FCC bulk and (100) surface, about 5000-10000 atoms are required in order to obtain an accurate converged value for the instability strain and a converged instability mode.  The instability modes are fundamentally different at the surface as compared to the bul