Abstract
The main aim in the paper is to give a brief account of work which has been done in the Institute of Metals Working and Physical Metallurgy, Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, on mechanisms of plastic deformation, dislocation structures, and properties of Cu and α-brasses. The investigations were carried out to determine how stacking-fault energy (SFE), temperature, and strain influence the thermally activated processes olplastic deformation. The work included different tests which were performed over a wide range of temperature and strain rates; these indicated the conditions at which deformation has an athermal character or becomes thermally activated. It was shown that dynamic recovery processes are responsible for differences in flow stress at different temperatures and strain rates and that SFE controls the intensity of these processes.