Scale invariance in plastic flow of crystalline solids

Abstract 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'). TableDownload CSVDisplay Table Acknowledgments M.Z. gratefully acknowledges numerous and stimulating discussions with S. Zapperi, J. Weiss, M.-C. Miguel, M. Alava, and E.C. Aifantis, as well as the collaboration of J. Schwerdtfeger, E. Nadgorny, P. Moretti, F. Madani, and A. Konstantinidis. Finally, the hospitality of CNR, Istituto di Sistemi Complessi, Rome, Italy, during the period in which this review was written is gratefully acknowledged.