Thermal Effects in Dislocation Theory II: Shear Banding and Yielding   Transitions
  The thermodynamic dislocation theory presented in preceding papers is used here to describe shear-banding instabilities. Central ingredients of the theory are a thermodynamically defined effective configurational temperature, and a formula for the plastic deformation rate determined by thermally activated depinning of entangled dislocations. An important feature of this paper is an interpretation of yielding transitions in polycrystalline solids. 
J. S. Langer
cond-mat.mtrl-sci cond-mat.stat-mech