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.