Serrated plastic flow in deforming complex concentrated alloys: universal signatures of dislocation avalanches

Under plastic flow, multi-element high/medium-entropy alloys (HEAs/MEAs) commonly exhibit complex intermittent and collective dislocation dynamics owing to inherent lattice distortion and atomic-level chemical complexities. Using atomistic simulations, we report on an avalanche study of model face-centered cubic (fcc) NiCoCrFeMn and NiCoCr chemically complex alloys aiming for microstructural/topological characterization of associated dislocation avalanches. The results of our avalanche simulations reveal a close correspondence between the observed serration features in the stress response of the deforming HEA/MEA and the incurred slip patterns within the bulk crystal. We show that such correlations become quite pronounced within the rate-independent (quasi-static) regime exhibiting scale-free statistics and critical scaling features as universal signatures of dislocation avalanches.