Bending crystals: Emergence of fractal dislocation structures
Abstract
We provide a minimal continuum model for mesoscale plasticity, explaining the cellular dislocation structures observed in deformed crystals. Our dislocation density tensor evolves from random, smooth initial conditions to form self-similar structures strikingly similar to those seen experimentally - reproducing both the fractal morphologies and some features of the scaling of cell sizes and misorientations analyzed experimentally. Our model provides a framework for understanding emergent dislocation structures on the mesoscale, a bridge across a computationally demanding mesoscale gap in the multiscale modeling program, and a new example of self-similar structure formation in non-equilibrium systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1001.5053,
title = {Bending crystals: Emergence of fractal dislocation structures},
author = {Yong S. Chen and Woosong Choi and Stefanos Papanikolaou and James P. Sethna},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.5053},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures, 5 movies (They can be found at http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/Plasticity/SelfSimilarity.html .) In press at Phys. Rev. Lett