Dislocation creep behavior in Mg–Al–Zn alloys

The climb-controlled dislocation creep behavior was investigated in Mg–Al–Zn alloys of AZ31, AZ61 and AZ91 with different aluminum contents. The flow stress increased with the increase of aluminum content under the same deformation conditions. At high temperatures, the stress exponent was 5 and the activation energy was close to that for lattice diffusion of magnesium, whereas at low temperatures the stress exponent was 7 and activation energy was close to that for pipe diffusion for all alloys. By incorporating the effective diffusion coefficient and stacking fault energy into a constitutive equation, the dislocation creep behavior of magnesium alloys can be described by a single relation.