Long-range spatial correlations and scaling in dislocation and slip patterns

Jérôme Weiss (1) , Maurine Montagnat (1)

1 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement

Although the intermittent and heterogeneous nature of plastic flow has been known for several decades, only recently did observations performed on the surface of deformed samples by AFM or scanning white-light interferometry, or in the bulk by X-Ray topography, reveal the scale invariant character of dislocation and slip patterns emerging from collective dislocation interactions. This scale invariance implies that the spatial fluctuations of dislocation density and/or slip never vanish as one coarsens the observation scale. An immediate consequence is that a priori obvious concepts such as “slip bands” or dislocation density can be ill-defined. These detailed characterizations of the plastic flow heterogeneity also challenge the modelling of plasticity.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences Ceramics & Glasses, Composites, Condensed Matter Physics, Crystallography, Materials Science, Metals & Alloys, Nanoscience & Nanotechnology, Polymers & Plastics

Jérôme Weiss, Maurine Montagnat. Long-range spatial correlations and scaling in dislocation and slip patterns. Philosophical Magazine, 2007, 87 (08-09), pp.1161-1174. ⟨10.1080/14786430600936439⟩. ⟨hal-00513760⟩