Advances in the fabrication of alloys have led to an increased emphasis on accurate structural characterization. The research conducted here involves a study of the internal strains in random solid solutions caused by the size effect of the different atoms. Recent work has shown that analytic solutions are possible in terms of simple lattice integrals which characterize the topological rigidity of the lattice. The many body aspects of dense random arrays of overlapping strain fields are emphasized. The aim of the research is to produce analytical results for physical quantities that can be experimentally measured. These include the Bragg and Huang components of x-ray and neutron diffraction, and the mean and variance of the near neighbor distances obtained from EXAFS experiments. The analytic work will be verified by computer simulations using realistic potentials to generate relaxed samples from which quantities of experimental interest can be extracted. This unified approach will be applied to semiconductors, FCC metals and rare gas solids.
