Many materials exhibit a stochastic deformation response that can be detrimental for structural applications, but that also allow deep insights into how the underlying defect structure evolves. Due to the confinement in both space and time, intermittent plasticity has been challenging materials scientists for a long time. Classical examples encompass intermittent flow of single crystals or dynamic strain aging. More recent materials classes sharing spatiotemporal deformation dynamics are metallic glasses and high entropy alloys. In all of these materials, deformation is typically understood with respect to well defined structural excitations (e.g. dislocations, shear transformations, etc.), that traditionally have been characterized with mean properties of the evolving defect structure. A renewed interest in spatiotemporal deformation reveals that some aspects of plastic deformation are scale-free, being well described with power-law distributions known from general theories of critically evolving systems that lack a well-defined mean. With the advent of novel experimental and computational tools, it has now become possible to track the details of spatiotemporal deformation dynamics. This symposium seeks to discuss the underlying structural mechanisms for strain localization, avalanche dynamics, and intermittent deformation across all length and time-scales of condensed matter. This includes the experimental characterization of these phenomenon, novel model development, simulations and theory, and pathways how to predict and/or suppress stochastic flow via materials design.

acoustic emission ceramic defects ductility fracture metal microstructure simulation strain relationship x-ray diffraction (XRD)