CREEP

EMM 212 - PHYSICAL METALLURGY II

 Introduction
What is creep?

 Time – dependent permanent plastic deformation of materials, which

generally occurs at high temperatures (T > 0.4Tm), under a constant load or
stress.

 Time dependent decrease in stress at constant strain is called stress

relaxation, a consequence of creep.

 Creep takes place at stresses much lower than the yield stress of the
material.

 Creep is a performance based behaviour. It is not an intrinsic property of a

material.
 Introduction
 Why do we design against creep ?
 Creep is an undesirable phenomenon and is often the limiting factor in the lifetime of a part.

 Creep may lead to fracture or excessive undesirable deformation.

 Simple deformation occurring over time (even without rupture) can be a problem, e.g. turbine
blades fouling the outer casing.

 Complete creep-rupture may occur after prolonged deformation.

 Rupture itself may be promoted by altered loading conditions due to the on-going deformation

 Creep is important in applications such as: turbine blades (jet engines), gas
turbines, power plants (boilers and steam lines) which must operate at high
stresses and high temperatures without any changes in dimensions.

 Also occur at room temperature in some materials such as lead, polymers.

 Introduction
 Occurrence of creep is controlled by the homologous temperature (Th),
defined as the ratio of absolute operating temperature to absolute melting
temperature.
 Creep becomes important if T>0.3 to 0.4Tm for metals and T> 0.4 to 0.5Tm
for ceramics.
 For example:
 Tungsten for lamp filaments melts at 3273 K. Thus, it does not creep at
room temperature, but creeps at lamp operating temperatures of about
2273 K. Lamp filaments fail by sugging (creeping) under their own weight
till the coils touch. Creep life to rupture ~ 1000 hrs
 Many polymers creep at room temperature.
 Steel melts at about 1773 K and is known to creep in steam plant
applications at 873 K.
 Introduction
 In the design of high temperature components, there is always allowance for
emergencies:

 Impact situations, e.g. bird strike on an aeroengine – which leads to sharply

increased stress levels.

 Fires - increased temperature levels

 Flying on one engine, or secondary failure in a power plant – leads to significantly

increased stress-levels for a required period

 In all of the above situations, the service conditions may be very severe for a short
time, and there is need to know how long such a part will operate under these extreme
conditions without complete failure.

 Why creep at high temperature?

 Theory of creep – why creep at high Temp?
1. High temperature causes an increase in the mobility of atoms and vacancies.
 This results in an increase in the diffusion rate as atomic mobility is related to
diffusion as described by Ficks Law.
 Creep is a diffusion controlled mechanism and hence will increase with
temperature.
2. The number of vacancies increases with increase in temperature.
 Since vacancies aid diffusion, creep becomes easier.
3. Slip becomes easier at high temperature.
 Moreover, other slip systems, which are dormant at low temperature, may
become active when the temperature is raised.
 Easy slip means easier deformation leading to creep.
 Other diffusion controlled mechanisms affecting creep are dislocation climb and
grain boundary sliding.
 Theory of creep – why creep at high Temp?
3. High temperature may cause changes in microstructure e.g., in steels, cementite
may break down and eventually dissolve.

 In precipitations strengthened alloys, precipitate dissolution or over-aging

may occur. These lead to a weakening of the material, easier deformation,
and hence creep.

3. High temperature may also result in oxidation and intergranular corrosion and
cause deformation at grain boundaries.
 Creep Test
 Different tests may be required to evaluate high temperature properties, based on
the time scale of the service requirements.
1. High Temperature Tensile Test
 Similar to a short term room temperature test, i.e. completed in a few minutes
and producing stress versus strain curves at specific temperatures.
 Provides useful data for short term applications such as rocket parts.
2. Creep Test
 Measures dimensional changes accurately at constant high temperature and
constant stress
 Useful for long term applications which are strain limited, such as turbine blades.
3. Stress Rupture Test
 Measures time to failure at specified stress and temperature.
 Useful for applications where some strain can be tolerated but failure must be
avoided, such as large furnace housings.
 Creep Test
 A typical creep test (ASTM Standard
E139), involve subjecting a specimen to a
constant load or stress while maintaining
the temperature constant;
 The loads employed are typically below the
elastic limit.
 The strain (typically engineering strain) is
computed from the elongation
 Strain is plotted as a function of elapsed
time.
 Creep Test
 Upon application of the load, there is an
instantaneous deformation 𝟎 , that is totally
elastic.
 The resulting creep curve consists of three
regions:
 Primary/transient creep
 Creep rate decreases with time
 Effect of work hardening more than
recovery.
 Secondary/steady state creep
 Stage of minimum creep rate → ~
constant.
 Work hardening is balanced by recovery.
 Tertiary creep
 Necking of specimen starts in this stage.
Fig: Typical creep curve of strain versus time at  Specimen failure processes set in.
constant load and constant elevated temp.
 Creep Test
a. Stage I- Primary/ transient creep
 This stage is characterized by continuously decreasing creep rate i.e., the slope
of the curve decreases with time.
 The material experiences an increase in creep resistance or strain
hardening/resistance to plastic deformation i.e. deformation becomes more
difficult as the material is strained.

b. Stage II - Secondary /Steady state creep

 The strain rate is minimum and constant—i.e., the plot becomes linear.
 This is often the stage of creep that is of the longest duration.
 The constancy of creep rate is explained on the basis of a balance between the
competing processes of strain hardening and recovery,
 Recovery is the process by which a material becomes softer and retains its ability
to experience deformation.
 Fracture does not occur.
 Creep Test
c. Stage III: Tertiary Creep (failure-rupture)
 This stage is characterized by an increase in strain rate and
ultimate failure/rapture.
 The failure results from microstructural and/or metallurgical
changes—e.g., grain boundary separation, and the formation of
internal cracks, cavities, and voids.
 Also, for tensile loads, a neck may form at some point within the
deformation region. Necking lead to a decrease in the effective
cross-sectional area and an increase in strain rate.
 Creep Test
 The most important parameter from a creep test is the:
 Slope of the secondary portion of the creep curve ( );
 This is often called the minimum or steady-state creep rate 𝒔 .
 It is the engineering design parameter that is considered for critical
long-life applications, such as:
 A nuclear power plant component that is scheduled to operate for
several decades. Failure is not an option.
 However, for many relatively short-life creep situations:
 E.g., rocket motor nozzles
 Time to rupture, or the rupture lifetime, 𝒓 , is the dominant design
consideration.
 For the determination of time to rapture, creep tests must be
conducted to the point of failure; these are termed creep rupture
tests.
 Mechanisms of creep
 Stress and temperature are the two important variables, which not only
affect the creep rate, but also the operative mechanism.
 The chief creep
deformation mechanisms
can be grouped into:
 Dislocation related
 Diffusional related
 Grain boundary
sliding
 Mechanisms of creep
Dislocation related
 Increased mobility of dislocations occurs by diffusion of both vacancies and
atoms and contribute to creep.
 This explains dependence of power law creep on activation energy for self
diffusion.
 Cross-slip:
 Herein screw dislocations cross-slip by thermal activation and give rise
to plastic strain as a function of time.
 Dislocation climb:
 Edge dislocations piled up against an obstacle can climb to another slip
plane and cause plastic deformation in response to stress.
 This gives rise to strain as a function of time. It is to be noted that at
low temperatures, these dislocations (being pinned) are sessile and
become glissile only at high temperatures.
 Mechanisms of creep
Diffusion related
 In response to the applied stress vacancies preferentially move from
surfaces/interfaces (g.b.) of specimen transverse to the stress axis
to surfaces/interfaces parallel to the stress axis→ thus causing
elongation.
 Diffusion of vacancies in one direction can be thought of as flow of
matter in the opposite direction..

 This process, like dislocation creep (involving climb), is controlled by

the diffusion of vacancies (but diffusional creep does not require
dislocations to operate).
 The diffusion could occur predominantly via the lattice (at relatively
high temperatures and low stresses) or via grain boundaries (at low
temperatures).
 Mechanisms of creep
Grain boundary sliding
 At high temperatures the grain boundary becomes weaker than
the grain interior and two grains can slide past one another due
to shear stress.
 The larger the grain size, the better a material’s resistance to
creep.
 Relative to grain size, smaller grains permit more grain
boundary sliding, which results in higher creep rates.
 This effect may be contrasted to the influence of grain size on
the mechanical behavior at low temperatures [i.e., increase in
both strength and toughness.
 Mechanisms of creep
Grain boundary sliding
 The sliding of grain boundaries gives rise to cavitation and triple point cracking.
 If these wedge cracks are not healed by diffusion (or slip), microstructural damage will
accumulate and will lead to failure of the specimen.
 STRESS AND TEMPERATURE EFFECTS

 Both temperature and the level of the

applied stress influence the creep
characteristics.
 At a temperature substantially below
0.4Tm, and after the initial deformation,
the strain is virtually independent of
time.
 With either increasing stress or
temperature, the following will be noted:
 the instantaneous strain at the time
of stress application increases,
 the steady-state creep rate
increases, and
 the rupture lifetime decreases.

Fig. Influence of stress s and temperature T on creep behavior.

 STRESS AND TEMPERATURE EFFECTS
 The results of creep rupture tests are most commonly presented as the
logarithm of stress versus the logarithm of rupture lifetime.

Fig: Stress (logarithmic

scale) versus rupture
lifetime (logarithmic scale)
for an S-590 alloy at four
temperatures. [The
composition (in wt%) of S-
590 is as follows: 20.0 Cr,
19.4 Ni, 19.3 Co, 4.0 W, 4.0
Nb, 3.8 Mo, 1.35 Mn, 0.43 C,
and the balance Fe.]
 Creep curves
 A plot of the logarithm of stress versus the logarithm of creep rate yields a straight line
with slope of 𝒏 as shown in the figure below for an S-590 alloy.

Fig: Stress (logarithmic scale)

versus steady-state creep
rate (logarithmic scale) for an
S-590 alloy at four
temperatures.
 Design against creep
 Some of the factors that affect creep characteristics of metals include;
 Melting temperature,
 Elastic modulus, and
 Grain size.
 In general,
 The higher the melting temperature, the greater the elastic modulus;
 The larger the grain size, the better a material’s resistance to creep.
 Relative to grain size, smaller grains permit more grain boundary sliding,
which results in higher creep rates.
 Design against creep
 To reduce creep:
1. Dislocation mobility should be limited as much as possible:
 Precipitation strengthening: avoid coarsening or dissolution of precipitates at
high temperatures. e.g. ’ precipitates in Ni-base superalloys which has a high
solvus temperature and tends not to coarsen as there is little mismatch
strain between the precipitate and matrix (coherent with the lattice)
 Dispersion strengthening: addition of thermally stable dispersoids that
never coarsen or dissolve e.g. Y2O3, thoria,… => powder metallurgy routes
required
 Keep dislocations pinned: hinder recovery processes. Low Stacking Fault
Energy (SFE) will make climb more difficult, as dislocations will be
dissociated
 Design against creep
 To reduce creep:
2. Limit self-diffusion => choose high Tm materials (high Qd)
3. Limit grain boundary sliding:
 No sliding along g.b.s parallel to the applied stress (use directionally aligned
grains)
 Have fewer grain boundaries (e.g. use single crystal)
4. Advanced processing techniques have been utilized;
 One such technique is directional solidification, which produces either highly
elongated grains or single-crystal components.

 Stainless steels and the superalloys are especially resilient to creep and
are commonly employed in high-temperature service applications.
Design against creep
 Fig(a) Polycrystalline turbine
blade that was produced by a
conventional casting technique.
 Fig(b) Columnar grain turbine
blade produced by directional
solidification.
 High-temperature creep
resistance is improved as a
result of an oriented columnar
grain structure.
 Fig(c) Single crystal turbine blade.
 Single crystals further
enhances creep resistance
 Design against creep
 For long life applications, such as a nuclear power plant component that is scheduled
to operate for several decades, the engineering design parameter used is the
steady-state creep rate from the second stage.
 Empirical relationships have been developed in which the steady-state creep rate as
a function of stress and temperature is expressed. Its dependence on stress can be
written as:

Where K1 and n are material constants.

 When the influence of temperature is included, the equation changes to;

𝒏 𝒄
𝒔 𝟏

Where K2 and Qc are constants; Qc is termed the activation energy for creep.
 The total strain in the material, 𝒕 is made up of an elastic component, 𝒆 , and a
plastic component, 𝒑
 Design against creep
 For relatively short-life creep situations (e.g., turbine blades in military
aircraft and rocket motor nozzles), time to rupture, or the rupture
lifetime tr, is the dominant design consideration.
 For this design consideration, a commonly used extrapolation procedure
employs the Larson–Miller parameter, m, defined as;

where C is a constant (usually on the order of 20), for T in Kelvin and the
rupture lifetime tr in hours.
 A plot of stress vs the Larson–Miller parameter is as shown on the next
page.
 Design against creep

Logarithm of stress versus the Larson–Miller Logarithm stress versus the Larson– Miller parameter
parameter for an S-590 alloy. for an 18-8 Mo stainless steel.
 Examples
1. Steady state creep rate
Steady- state creep rate data ae given in the following table for aluminium at 260oC (533K). Compute
the steady state creep rate at a stress of 10MPa and 260oC.

𝜺𝒔 𝒉̇ 𝟏 𝝈(𝑴𝑷𝒂)
22.0 𝑥 10 3
3.65 25
Since temperature is constant, the equation below can be used to solve this problem.
𝒏
𝒔 𝟏
𝒔

Form two equations from the data provided and solve for the values of n and K1

n= 4.63
K1= 1.24 * 10-6

The strain rate at 10 Mpa is thus obtained as = 5.3 * 10-2 h-1

 Examples
b. Rupture Lifetime Prediction
Using the Larson–Miller data for the S-590
alloy, predict the time to rupture for a
component that is subjected to a stress of 140
MPa at 8000C (1073 K).
Solution:
From Figure of S-590 alloy, at 140 MPa the value
of the Larson–Miller parameter is 24.0 x 103
for Temp in K and Time in Hr

Using the equation: 𝒓

tr is obtained as 233h (9.7 days)

Logarithm of stress versus the Larson–

Miller parameter for an S-590 alloy.
 Exercises
1. An S-590 iron component must have a creep rupture lifetime of at least 100
days at 5000C (773 K). Compute the maximum allowable stress level.
(Ans:530MPa )
2. Consider an S-590 iron component that is subjected to a stress of 200 Mpa. At
what temperature will the rupture lifetime be 500 h? (Ans: T = 991 K)
3. For an 18-8 Mo stainless steel, predict the time to rupture for a component that
is subjected to a stress of 80 MPa at 7000C (973 K). (Ans: tr= 1.42 × 104 h =
1.6 yr)
4. Consider an 18-8 Mo stainless steel component that is exposed to a temperature
of 5000C (773 K). What is the maximum allowable stress level for a rupture
lifetime of 5 years? 20 years? (Ans: 260 Mpa and 225 MPa respectively)
 Exercises
5. For a cylindrical S-590 alloy specimen originally 10 mm in diameter and
500mm long, what tensile load is necessary to produce a total elongation of
145 mm after 2,000 h at 730°C ? Assume that the sum of instantaneous
and primary creep elongations is 8.6 mm. (Ans. 15,700 N).
6. A cylindrical component 50 mm long constructed from an S-590 alloy is
to be exposed to a tensile load of 70,000 N. What minimum diameter is
required for it to experience an elongation of no more than 8.2 mm after an
exposure for 1,500 h at 6500C? Assume that the sum of instantaneous and
primary creep elongations is 0.6 mm.
 Exercises

7. A specimen 700 mm long of an S-590 alloy is to be exposed to a tensile

stress of 80 MPa at 8150C. Determine its elongation after 5000 h. Assume
that the total of both instantaneous and primary creep elongations is 1.5mm.
(Ans: 22.1mm)
8. If a component fabricated from an S-590 alloy (Figure 8.30) is to be
exposed to a tensile stress of 300 MPa at 650°C , estimate its rupture
lifetime. (Ans: about 600 h )
Thank You !!