The effects of the narrowing and branching of screw slip bands during plastic straining of non-uniformly doped or non-uniformly irradiated layered crystals were considered theoretically on the basis of the equations of dislocation kinetics. Band formation was treated as a process which involved the self-organization of dislocations in a dislocation ensemble at the mesoscopic level. The distributions of the densities of mobile and immobile dislocations, as well as of the local plastic strain rate, in a slip band which was propagating in a layered crystal were obtained. It was found that the narrowing of bands was due to the lower rate of broadening of the bands in stiff layers than in soft layers, which had not been hardened by doping or irradiation. Branching was due to the low local strain rate in stiff layers as compared with the strain rate per slip band which was imposed by the straining machine. In the latter case, nucleation of new bands or branching of existing bands was required in order to restore the balance between these rates.

Features of Slip-Band Formation during the Plastic Straining of Layered Crystals. G.A.Malygin: Fizika Tverdogo Tela, 1999, 41[2], 252-8 (Physics of the Solid State, 1999, 41[2], 224-9)