Virtual diffraction analysis of dislocations and dislocation networks in discrete dislocation dynamics simulations

•Virtual diffraction profiles are generated from simulated networks of dislocations.•The role of elastic strain field correlations on peak profile shape is studied.•A surrogate model predicts dislocation densities from diffraction profiles.•The surrogate model is trained using a database of 185 profiles for Al.•Good predictions are made using 35 models not in the training dataset.