 Creep is the continued slow straining of a

material under the influence of a constant load.

 The amount of strain developed in a material
becomes a function of time and temperature, as
well as stress. Time – dependent permanent
deformation, which generally occurs at high
temperatures (T > 0.4Tm), under a constant load
or stress.
 It can also happened at room temperature for
soft metals such as Lead.
 It is a slow process, where deformation changes
with time.
 Creep in 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.
 The phenomenon of creep can occurs in all types of
materials .
 In case of thermoplastic materials, creep is
significance of all temperatures above the Tg
value.(The Glass Transition Temperature (Tg) is the
temperature region where the polymer transitions from a
hard, glassy material to a soft, rubbery material. )
 In metals creep occurs at temperatures above about
0.3 – 0.4Tm and in ceramics creep above 0.4to
0.5Tm.
.
 Primary creep
Secondary creep
Tertiary creep
 In first stage, primary or transient creep,
the rate of creep strain is initially high but
steadily reduces to the constant rate of
the second stage, secondary or steady-
state creep.
 Eventually this moves into the final stage,
tertiary creep, where creep rate
increases and leads rapidly to failure.
 The change from secondary to tertiary
creep is caused by intervention of some
other effect such as the formation of small
internal cavities or localized necking of
the material. When such effects occurs, the
effective stress in necked zone will
increase will cause the increase in rate of
strain. This is the onset of tertiary creep
and usually, there is rapid acceleration in
the creep strain rate leading to failure.
 In creep, lattice mechanism involves vacancy
diffusion, dislocation climb, grain boundary
sliding may also be important, particularly
where second phases are present at the
grain boundaries.
 At constant stress level, the rate of secondary
creep increases with increase in temperature
according to Arrhenius law or (rate of creep)
 dε/dt=K exp(-B/T)
 Where Dε/dt is the strain rate
 T is temperature (Kelvin)
 And K and B are constant for the materials.
 The Effect of increase in temperature on the
creep rate in fig.
 It will be seen that there is primary creep
only, with secondary creep rate of zero, at a
relatively low temperature but very high
temperature primary stage merges in with
tertiary creep.
 At constant temperature creep rate is
stress-dependent and follows a power law,
the relationship being.
 dε/dt=C σn
 Where C is a constant for the material
and n is another constant, the time
exponent.
 For many materials, value of exponent n
lies between 3 and 8, while for glasses it
is of order of 10.
 The above relationship can be combined,
to a general creep equation:
dε/dt=A σn exp(-B/T)
 When creep occurs in ceramics under
tensile load overall strain is usually less
than 1percent and failure occurs during
steady state creep before the tertiary
stage is reached.
 In glasses creep is due to viscous flow of
Newtonian fluid of high viscosity.
 The creep of thermoplastic polymers
occurs by a process viscous flow.
 The intermolecular bonding forces
between the molecular chains are
relatively week van der Waal's forces and
even at low level of stress, creep occurs
in many thermoplastic materials.
 The creep resistance of polymers is
increased substantially by incorporating
glass or carbon fibers reinforcement.
 Materials with high resistance of creep
and needed for hot ends of turbine
engines.
 The development of engine of greater
thermal efficiency and working at high
operating temperatures provides the
stimulus for research in creep leads to
develop the better creep resistance
alloys.