Scale invariance in plastic flow of crystalline solids

From the traditional viewpoint of continuum plasticity, plastic deformation of crystalline solids is, at least in the absence of so-called plastic instabilities, envisaged as a smooth and quasi-laminar flow process. Recent theoretical and experimental investigations, however, demonstrate that crystal plasticity is characterized by large intrinsic spatio-temporal fluctuations with scale-invariant characteristics: In time, deformation proceeds through intermittent bursts with power-law size distributions; in space, deformation patterns and deformation-induced surface morphology are characterized by long-range correlations, self-similarity and/or self-affine roughness. We discuss this scale-invariant behaviour in terms of robust scaling associated with a non-equilibrium critical point (‘yielding transition’).

Scale invariance in plastic flow of crystalline solids

All authors

Michael Zaiser

https://doi.org/10.1080/00018730600583514

Published online:

01 February 2007

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