Spatio-temporal plastic instabilities at the nano/micro scale

Recent experimental observations revealed the inherent nature of strong intermittent and heterogeneous plastic deformation at the nano- to micrometer scale. We present here a review of quantitative measures of temporal and spatial material instabilities associated with small-scale plastic flow. Spatial correlation characterization methods are developed and used to obtain information on the width of shear bands resulting from spatial instabilities. The effects of atomic-scale barriers to dislocation motion and the influence of sample size on temporal and spatial plastic instabilities are discussed. A simplified branching model of dislocation source activation is extended to predict dislocation barrier effects on strain burst statistics, and the transition from power law scaling to an exponential-like distribution. The connection between temporal and spatial plastic instabilities is discussed, and the efforts of considering these effects in crystal plasticity theory are also highlighted.