On the role of dislocation conservation in higher‐order crystal plasticity

Abstract The interactions between individual dislocations contribute significantly to size effects as observed at the plastic deformation of miniaturized structures. When employing a crystal plasticity framework, these interactions are usually captured by an additional balance relation. In this paper we study two approaches to capture dislocation interactions in crystal plasticity that differ by the conservation of dislocations. (© 2009 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)