The vast majority of materials used for practical applications are heterogeneous: they consists in precipitates, often issued from a phase transformation, embedded into a matrix. Theses microstructures form and evolve under the simultaneous action of various driving forces: thermodynamics, elastic relaxation, plastic activity.
Whereas the coupling between out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics and elastic fields is well understood, the incorporation of plastic flow and its interplay with microstructure evolution is less straightforward. We will address different aspects of this problem using phase-field type continuous methods. Various aspects of plastic activity will be discussed, such as creep, coherency loss, dislocation climb…
