Sublimation inside an elastoplastic material.

Thermodynamic and kinetic approaches for sublimation inside elastoplastic material under tensile stress are developed for large strains. Various conceptual problems related to irreversible plastic deformation are addressed for a spherical bubble. They include definitions of the thermodynamic driving forces and activation energies, nontraditional concepts of a critical nucleus, path dependence of its appearance, modes of its growth (sublimation or expansion due to loss of mechanical stability), and the possibility of reverse transformation.