Dislocation patterning in fatigued metals as a result of dynamical instabilities

Abstract

The nucleation of persistent slip bands in stressed materials is described as a cooperative phenomenon for dislocation populations. It is the competition between their mobility and their nonlinear interactions (creation, annihilation, and pinning) which causes the instability of uniform dislocation distributions versus inhomogeneous ones and leads to the formation and persistence of dislocation patterns.