The Effect of Forest Dislocations on the Evolution of a Phase-Field Model for Plastic Slip

TL;DR

This paper investigates how forest dislocations affect the evolution of a phase-field model for plastic slip, revealing that the gradient flow dynamics do not converge to the expected limit, with implications for understanding plastic deformation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the gradient flows of the energy functional with forest dislocations do not approach the limiting energy's gradient flow, highlighting a discrepancy in the model's evolution dynamics.

Findings

Gradient flows do not converge to the limit energy's flow.

Presence of obstacles introduces additional friction in the evolution.

Model explains plastic deformation persists despite forest dislocations.

Abstract

We consider the gradient flow evolution of a phase-field model for crystal dislocations in a single slip system in the presence of forest dislocations. The model consists of a Peierls-Nabarro type energy penalizing non-integer slip and elastic stress. Forest dislocations are introduced as a perforation of the domain by small disks where slip is prohibited. The $\Gamma$-limit of this energy was deduced by Garroni and M\"uller (2005 and 2006). Our main result shows that the gradient flows of these $\Gamma$-convergent energy functionals do not approach the gradient flow of the limiting energy. Indeed, the gradient flow dynamics remains a physically reasonable model in the case of non-monotone loading. Our proofs rely on the construction of explicit sub- and super-solutions to a fractional Allen-Cahn equation on a flat torus or in the plane, with Dirichlet data on a union of small discs. The presence of these obstacles leads to an additional friction in the viscous evolution which appears as a stored energy in the $\Gamma$-limit, but it does not act as a driving force. Extensions to related models with soft pinning and non-viscous evolutions are also discussed. In terms of physics, our results explain how in this phase field model the presence of forest dislocations still allows for plastic as opposed to only elastic deformation.