Thermal Effects in Dislocation Theory II: Shear Banding and Yielding Transitions

The thermodynamic dislocation theory presented in preceding papers is used here to describe shear-banding instabilities. Central ingredients of the theory are a thermodynamically defined effective configurational temperature, and a formula for the plastic deformation rate determined by thermally activated depinning of entangled dislocations. An important feature of this paper is an interpretation of yielding transitions in polycrystalline solids.