Evaluation of Power Law Creep in Bending

Abstract

Materials for engineering components operating at high temperatures during their service like rockets, aero-turbines, automobile engines, nuclear power plants, steam power plants and micro-electronics are often designed for creep resistance. Creep studies for such systems are performed either as a material selection routine or for investigating the residual-life, integrity and reliability of the components. Conventionally, uniaxial tests, which are the most reliable creep testing method, are adopted to study the dominant creep mechanism of materials systems at a particular stress and temperature. However, with increased demand for improving system efficiency, high throughput testing and miniaturization, a need for alternate testing methodology is realised. This work analyses the structure-property correlation of bending creep in the power-law regime and aims to establish it as one such alternative testing method with the prospects of obtaining reliable creep data from a small sample volume and at a yield rate that is 10 times faster than the conventional testing routes. In this work, the possibility of an uniaxially equivalent deformation state in bending was investigated. Digital image correlation was adopted to obtain strain and strain-rates at multiple locations in a cantilever... newline