Serrated creep and spatio-temporal structures of macrolocalized plastic deformation

The dynamics and morphology of macrolocalized deformation bands have been investigated using a complex of high-speed in situ methods under the conditions of serrated creep of flat samples of the aluminum-magnesium alloy 5456 with different aspect ratios. It has been found that, at the front of a macroscopic plastic deformation jump, a complex structure of propagating deformation bands, which are considered as macrolocalized deformation “quanta,” is spontaneously formed in the material. It has been shown that, with an increase in the sample length, the deformation behavior of the alloy tends to the state of self-organized criticality.