Comparison of mechanical behaviour of thin film simulated by discrete dislocation dynamics and continuum crystal plasticity

3D finite element simulations of 9-grain multicrystalline aggregates are performed within the framework of the classical continuum crystal plasticity and discrete dislocation dynamics. The results are processed in a statistical way by ensemble averaging. The comparison is made at three levels: macroscopic stress–strain curves, average stress values per grain, local values of stress and plastic strain. The comparison shows that some similarities are observed in the stress and strain distributions in both simulations approaches. But there are also large discrepancies caused by the discrete nature of plasticity in DDD. The DDD simulations provide higher stress levels in the aggregate due to the small number of dislocation sources and to the stress field induced by individual dislocations.