Abstract
The lightweight and high specific strength magnesium alloys are important as structural materials. However, magnesium and magnesium alloys have low plastic formability. It is important to understand the deformation mechanism to improve their plasticity. In the behaviors of slip deformation and dislocation motions, the critical and effective parameter is the generalized stacking fault (GSF) energy. In this work, the GSF energies on basal, prismatic and second-order pyramidal plane in magnesium are calculated by ab initio pseudopotential method. Then the Peierls stresses are obtained from calculated GSF energies within the framework of a Peierls-Nabarro model. The magnitude of the Peierls stress is in good agreement with experimental measurement.
