Ginzburg-Landau equation for steps on creep curve

We consider a model proposed by us earlier for describing a form of plastic instability found in creep experiments. The model consists of three types of dislocations and some transformations between, them. The model is known to reproduce a number of experimentally observed features. The mechanism for the phenomenon has been shown to be Hopf bifurcation with respect to physically relevant drive parameters. Here, we present a mathematical analysis of adiabatically eliminating the fast mode and obtaining a Ginzburg-Landau equation for the slow modes associated with the steps on creep curve. The transition to the instability region is found to be one of subcritical bifurcation over a major part of the interval of one of the parameters while supercritical bifurcation is found in a narrow mid-range of the parameter. This result is consistent with experiments. The dependence of the amplitude and the period of strain jumps on stress and temperature derived from the Ginzburg-Landau equation are also consistent with experiments. On the basis of detailed numerical solution via power series expansion, we show that high order nonlinearities control a large portion of the subcritical domain.