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(plastic deformation does occur over a long period of time assuming you don't exceed the yield strength of the metal)
Technically, stress relaxation is a logorithmic function of time. So, stress relaxation occurs the most at the beginning and tapers off. The amount of relaxation is dependant on the stress and the temperature. I did some stress relaxation tests here at work last year where we were trying to find the relaxation charactistics of some super alloys that we make.

Steve
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