4.3 Strain and stored energy The degree of plastic strain and the associated stored energy are very important for material scientists to study the growth rate of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) [24] and the driving force of recrystallization [1], respectively. Changes in the IQ value and in local orientation have been used to study the strain and stored energy [1,24,25]. IQ value, the quality of the diffraction patterns, indicates the distortion degree of crystal lattices in the diffraction patterns [26]. Kernel average misorientation (KAM), one of the functions of commercial software, e.g. orientation imaging microscopy (OIM 5.3), shows the distribution of local misorientation based on a Kernel average misorientation