Prepared by S.Spigarelli
INFM/Department of Mechanics, University of Ancona,
Ancona, Italy

Aluminium and its alloys. Its major goals are:
- to provide basic information on creep and its mechanisms
- to give a description of the more extensively used mathematical relations
among creep variables (time, stress and temperature)
- to illustrate the creep response of pure Aluminium and of Al-Mg alloys
- to provide a synthesis of the information available in the literature on the creep
behaviour of a number of new alloys and composites in the form of a series of
figures elaborated on the basis of the data reported in same sources.

1253.01 Introduction to Creep____________________________________________ 3 1253.02 The Creep Curve_________________________________________________ 3 1253.03 Secondary or minimum creep rate, time to rupture_____________________ 5

1253.04 Parametric Approach for Time-to-Rupture Prediction___________________ 8 1253.05 Creep mechanisms: pure metals (class M) and solid solutions (class A)______ 9 1253.06 Methods to Improve the Creep Strength of a Metallic Material___________ 12 1253.07 Creep Rupture_________________________________________________14 1253.08 The Creep Response of Pure Aluminium____________________________ 15 1253.09 The Creep Response of Al-Mg Solid-solution Alloys__________________ 16 1253.10 The Creep Response of High Strength Aluminium Alloys_______________ 17 1253.11 Creep-resistant Al-base Materials: High-strength Powder Metallurgy-

Dispersion-strengthened Aluminium Alloys__________________________________ 19 1253.12 Creep-resistant Al-base Materials: Composites_______________________ 23 1253.13 Final comments on the effectiveness and common features of creep- resistant

aluminium alloys_______________________________________________________ 24 1253.14 Literature_____________________________________________________24 1253.15 List of Figures__________________________________________________ 26

The termcreep indicates the permanent, time-dependent deformation that occurs when a material is exposed to high temperature under a constant applied stress (or load). Creep is observed in all metals, provided that the operating temperature (T) exceeds 0.3-0.5 TM, where TM is the absolute melting temperature. The following table lists the lower temperature limit under which creep phenomena can be neglected (pure metals). It can easily be observed that, due to its low melting temperature, Aluminium is subject to creep even at relatively low temperatures (i.e. 200-300\u00b0C).

T > 0.36 TM Austenitic stainless steels T > 0.49 TM Superalloys

Creep is investigated by tension, compression or even torsion tests under constant stress or, more frequently, constant load. While constant-stress data provide a better understanding of the basic creep mechanisms, constant-load tests give more useful information from an engineering point of view (for instance, the weight of a self- loading component operating at high temperature, remains unchanged throughout its life). Temperature must obviously be maintained constant during each test, and elongation should be continuously recorded.

Figure 1253.02.01 shows a schematic representation of a creep curve as obtained during a constant-load test. After an instantaneous deformation upon loading (\u03b50), the strain increases monotonically with time up to rupture (\u03b5R). The overall deformation after loading can thus be written in the generic form:

occurrence of a constant strain-rate regime is generally explained in terms of a balance between strain hardening and structure recovery (a softening process determined by the high temperature).