Plastic Deformation

· The creation of two partial dislocations and a region of stacking fault from a unit dislocation may be represented by:

· The stacking fault has a higher energy than the host lattice and as the width of the stacking fault increases, the total energy of the dissociation increases.
· When a unit screw dislocation dissociates into two partial dislocations and stacking fault, its motion is constrained to the atomic plane containing the stacking fault.
· The stacking fault restricts the motion of screw dislocations and increases work hardening and restricts recovery processes.