Creep (deformation)

Creep is the term used to describe the tendency of a material to move or to deform permanently to relieve stresses. Material deformation occurs as a result of long term exposure to levels of stress that are below the yield or ultimate strength of the material. Creep is more severe in materials that are subjected to heat for long periods and near melting point.

An easily produced example of creep is the sagging of a chocolate bar under its own weight on a hot day. Another example may be found in old glazed windows where otherwise normal looking panes have sagged to become thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top (although in most cases this is an artifact of ancient glass manufacturing techniques).

The rate of this damage is a function of the material properties and the exposure time, exposure temperature and the applied load (stress). Depending on the magnitude of the applied stress and its duration, the deformation may become so large that a component can no longer perform its function - for example creep of a turbine blade will cause the blade to contact the casing, resulting in the failure of the blade. Creep is usually a concern to engineers and metallurgists when evaluating components that operate under high stresses and/or temperatures. Creep is not necessarily a failure mode, but is instead a damage mechanism. Moderate creep in concrete is sometimes welcomed because it relieves tensile stresses that may otherwise have lead to cracking.

Overview

Rather than failing suddenly with a fracture, the material permanently strains over a longer period of time until it finally fails. Creep does not happen upon sudden loading but the accumulation of creep strain in longer times causes failure of the material. This makes creep deformation a "time-dependent" deformation of the material.

Creep deformation can be obtained in reasonable time frames under very high temperatures i.e., temperatures around half of the absolute melting temperature. This deformation behaviour is important in systems for which high temperatures are endured, such as nuclear power plants, jet engines, heat exchangers etc. Since the relevant temperature is relative to melting point (usually at temperatures greater than half the melting temperature), creep can be seen at relatively low temperatures depending upon the alloy. Plastics and low-melting-temperature metals, including many solders creep at room temperature, as can be seen markedly in older lead hot-water pipes. Planetary ice is often at a high temperature (relative to its melting point), and creeps. Virtually any material will creep upon approaching its melting temperature.

An example of an application involving creep deformation is the design of tungsten lightbulb filaments. Sagging of the filament coil between its supports increases with time due to creep deformation caused by the weight of the filament itself. If too much deformation occurs, the adjacent turns of the coil touch one another, causing an electrical short and local overheating, which quickly leads to failure of the filament. The coil geometry and supports are therefore designed to limit the stresses caused by the weight of the filament, and a special tungsten alloy with small amounts of oxygen trapped in the grain boundaries is used to slow the rate of Coble creep.

Steam piping within fossil-fuel fired power plants with superheated vapour work under high temperature (1050°F/565.5°C and high pressure (often at 3500 psig/ 24.1 MPa or greater). In a jet engine temperatures may reach to 1000°C, which may initiate creep deformation in a weak zone. Because of these reasons, understanding and studying creep deformation behaviour of engineering materials is very crucial for public and operational safety.

Stages of creep

Initially, the strain rate slows with increasing strain. This is known as primary creep. The strain rate eventually reaches a minimum and becomes near-constant. This is known as secondary or steady-state creep. It is this regime that is most well understood. The "creep strain rate" is typically the rate in this secondary stage. The stress dependence of this rate depends on the creep mechanism. In tertiary creep, the strain-rate exponentially increases with strain.

Mechanisms of creep

Dislocation creep

At high stresses (relative to the shear modulus), creep is controlled by the movement of dislocations. Dislocations may move in a conservative fashion, retaining their length, or they move in a non-conservative fashion--increasing their length through atomic diffusion. The former process is known as 'glide' and the latter as 'climb.'

Glide-controlled

At lower temperatures, creep can be controlled by dislocation glide. Typically, this glide is opposed by obstacles (other dislocations, solute atoms or precipitates, grain boundaries, etc.). These control the creep rate, which is proportional to the square of the stress.

Power-law

The rate of dislocation creep tends to have a power law dependence on the stress in the material.

$\frac{d\epsilon}{dt} = A \sigma^n e^\frac{-Q}{\bar R T}$

$A$ is a parameter relating to the material being crept and the sub-mechanism controlling creep.

$Q$ is the activation energy for creep.

$\bar R$ is the universal gas constant.

$T$ is the absolute temperature

This mechanism readily occurs at temperatures above 0.3T_m in pure metals and above 0.4T_m in most ceramics and alloys, where T_m is the melting temperature of the material. These are the temperatures where diffusion within the material becomes significant. The stress exponent n usually lies between 3 and 10, and is determined by the sub-mechanism and the material composition. Some alloys exhibit a very large stress exponent ( $n>10$ ), and this has typically been explained by introducing a "threshold stress," $\sigma_{th}$ , below which creep can't be measured. The modfied power law equation then becomes: $\frac{d\epsilon}{dt} = A \left(\sigma-\sigma_{th}\right)^n e^\frac{-Q}{\bar R T}$ where $A$ , $Q$ and $n$ can all be explained by conventional mechanisms (so $3\leq{n}\leq{10}$ ).

Diffusional creep

Diffusional creep occurs at lower stresses than dislocation creep. Atoms diffuse (due to a chemical potential gradient) through and around grain boundaries when a material is under stress. The relationship between this type of creep and stress is linear.

At low temperatures, creep is controlled by grain-boundary diffusion, and is known as Coble creep. It scales inversely to the cube of the grain size.

At higher temperatures, creep is controlled by lattice diffusion, and is known as Nabarro-Herring creep. It scales inversely to the square of the grain size.

Other examples

The Collapse of the World Trade Center was credited in part to creep.

The creep rate of hot pressure-loaded components in a nuclear reactor at power can be a significant design-constraint, since the creep rate is enhanced by the flux of energetic particles.

References

External links

Materials science

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