Influence of aluminium content on the deformation mechanisms in Mg-Al binary alloys has been studied using in-situ neutron diffraction and acoustic emission technique. It is shown that the addition of the solute increases the critical resolved shear stress for twinning.
Further, the role of aluminium on the solid solution hardening of the basal plane and softening of non-basal planes are discussed using results of the convolutional multiple peak profile analysis of diffraction patterns. The results indicate that the density of both prismatic [a] and pyramidal [c + a] dislocations increases with increasing alloying content.