Strain avalanches in plasticity

Plastic deformation at the mechanism level in all solids occurs in the form of discrete thermally activated individual stress relaxation events. While there are clear differences in mechanisms between dislocation mediated events in crystalline solids and by individual shear transformations in amorphous metals and semiconductors, such relaxation events interact strongly to form avalanches of strain bursts. In all cases the attendant distributions of released energy as amplitudes of acoustic emissions, or in serration amplitudes in flow stress, the levels of strain bursts are of fractal character with fractal exponents in the range from -1.5 to -2.0, having the character of phenomena of self-organized criticality, SOC. Here we examine strain avalanches in single crystals of ice, hcp metals, the jerky plastic deformations of nano-pillars of fcc and bcc metals deforming in compression, those in the plastic flow of bulk metallic glasses, all demonstrating the remarkable universality of character of plastic relaxation events.