Tero Makinen's and Mikko Alava's paper at Science Advances: Propagating bands of plastic deformation in a metal alloy as critical avalanches

This work has been carried out by a group of researchers featuring Mr Tero Mäkinen, a PhD student of  Mikko Alava. The full article at Science Advances weblage: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/41/eabc7350/tab-article-info 

"Understanding the way metal alloys deform is crucial for engineering and design. One crucial mechanism is the Portevin-LeChatelier effect, in which such alloys get deformed in an unstable way when under external loads" - NOMATEN's Director Mikko Alava comments. "This manifests itself as bands of deformation, which may for instance initiate early failure. Our work explains moving bands of deformation as if they were earthquake -like, and paves the way to control their appearance and severity and alloy design to this end" - said prof. Mikko Alava.