A general concept for the consideration of the influence of strain gradients on elasto-viscoplastic material behaviour at finite deformation is presented that does not need to account for an additional flow rule for the plastic strain gradient. The balance of momentum including the representation of the stresses, the power of work at contact for the formulation of boundary conditions as well as the nonlocal form of the total power of deformation are derived via the dissipation inequality for the investigated nonpolar continuum model of second grade. In addition to the gradient of the elastic strain tensor, energy storage with gradients of different internal variables is considered: gradient of (i) the plastic strain Tensor itself, (ii) an internal strain tensor induced by viscoplastic straining, by which energy due to hardening is stored also with ist gradient, and (iii) scalar internal variables like the accumulated viscoplastic strain or an internal time variable of damage. Finally, for the simulation of the damage behaviour during a strain hold-time period at a crack tip the responses of a ratedependent and a quasi-rate-independent gradient-enhanced damage model are compared in finite element studies.
A hierarchy of higher order continua is presented that introduces additional degrees of freedom accounting for volume changes, rotation and straining of an underlying microstructure. An increase in the number of degrees of freedom represents a refinement of the material description. In addition to available nonlinear Cosserat and micromorphic theories, general formulations of elastoviscoplastic behaviour are proposed for microdilatation and microstretch continua. A microstrain theory is introduced that is based on six additional degrees of freedom describing the pure straining of the microstructural element. In each case, balance equations and boundary conditions are derived, decompositions of the finite strain measures into elastic and plastic parts are provided. The formulation of finite deformation elastoviscoplastic constitutive equations relies on the introduction of the free energy and dissipation potentials, thus complying with requirements of continuum thermodynamics. Some guidelines for the selection of a suitable higher order model for a given material close the discussion.