Stress Relaxation and the Activation Energy for Plastic Flow in Solids: Commercially‐Pure Aluminum

A new technique of studying plastic flow using stress relaxation is presented, related in derivation to the conventionally used creep and tensile methods. No specific deformation model, such as those used in related derivations, is assumed in this derivation, in which machine deformation and the change in elastic constants with temperature are taken into account. To illustrate the technique, it is applied to plastic flow in commercially‐pure aluminum, and the results obtained are compared with those obtained by creep and tensile methods.