2013 journal article
Physics and model of strengthening by parallel stacking faults
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 103(13).
We have recently reported that parallel stacking faults (SFs) can tremendously increase the strength of a magnesium alloy. The strengthening is found to increase linearly with the reciprocal of the mean SF spacing, d. In this study we analyze dislocation interactions with SFs, and then propose a physics-based model to explain the observed relationship between yield strength and SFs spacing. Similar to the empirical Hall-Petch relationship for grain size, it is expected that this strengthening mechanism will hold true for a variety of materials engineered with parallel spaced stacking faults over a wide range of fault spacing.