The nature of the high work-hardening rate of nitrogen bearing steels was examined focusing on the stacking fault energy (SFE). The dislocation configuration and the width of dissociated dislocations were evaluated in various kinds of austenitic stainless steels with and without nitrogen, using the weak beam method. Nitrogen addition resulted in changing the dislocation configuration from tangled to planar. Nitrogen was, however, found to increase the SFE rather than decrease as reported previously and the SFE can be formulated as a function of chemical composition, SFE(mJ/m~2) = 5.53 - 0.16 (wt%Cr) + 1.40 (wt%Ni) + 17.10 (wt%%N). These results indicate that dislocation planarization by nitrogen addition is inadequately explained in terms of SFE.
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