Universality and scaling of unstable plastic flow

The statistics of the jumplike plastic deformation of a Cu–Be alloy under the conditions of a low-temperature unstable plastic flow is studied experimentally. At a high strain rate, the parameters of the load jumps are found to be related by power laws, which corresponds to a scale-invariant behavior. A comparison with the data obtained for another mechanism of plastic instability, namely, the Portevin–Le Chatelier effect, points to the existence of universal laws governing the dynamics of a dislocation ensemble in the conditions of plastic instability.