Upscaling of the dynamics of dislocation walls

Abstract

We perform the discrete-to-continuum limit passage for a microscopic model describing the time evolution of dislocations in a one dimensional setting. This answers the related open question raised by Geers et al. in [GPPS13]. The proof of the upscaling procedure (i.e. the discrete-to-continuum passage) relies on the gradient flow structure of both the discrete and continuous energies of dislocations set in a suitable evolutionary variational inequality framework. Moreover, the convexity and $\Gamma$-convergence of the respective energies are properties of paramount importance for our arguments.