Well-posedness for the microcurl model in both single and polycrystal gradient plasticity

We consider the recently introduced microcurl model which is a variant of strain gradient plasticity in which the curl of the plastic distortion is coupled to an additional micromorphic-type field. For both single crystal and polycrystal cases, we formulate the model and show its well-posedness in the rate-independent case provided some local hardening (isotropic or linear kinematic) is taken into account. To this end, we use the functional analytical framework developed by Han-Reddy. We also compare the model to the relaxed micromorphic model as well as to a dislocation-based gradient plasticity model. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.