The Walgraef-Aifantis reaction-diffusion framework (W-A model) for dislocation patterning, proposed a quarter of a century ago, is revisited in view of new advances made in the field, including stochastic aspects.In the course of plastic deformation induced by dislocation glide, dislocation distributions, which are rather uniform at the beginning, quickly become unstable as deformation proceeds and undergo successive transitions towards various types of spatial patterns such as walls, cells, slip bands, labyrinth structures, etc.In the initial W-A model it was shown how the coupled nonlinear evolution of forest and gliding dislocation densities can generate spatially periodic dislocation patterns during cyclic deformation, commonly known as ladder structures of persistent slip bands. This model is updated here (Part I), to take care properly of the gradient terms of the mobile dislocation dynamics. It is shown that these terms generate space-dependent, nonlinear, self-and cross-diffusion terms, but also space-dependent advection terms which affect pattern formation and stability. Furthermore, it is argued that persistent slip bands nucleate preferentially through front propagation from stress inhomogeneities. The highly anisotropic character of the propagation velocity accounts for fast propagation in the slip direction, and very slow propagation in the climb direction. Next (Part II), the model is updated by incorporating the basics of the recently advanced stochastic/statistical approach of Groma-Zaiser and co-workers. It is shown that the resulting framework can conveniently describe self-assembly and self-organization phenomena as the external stress is increased.
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