Creep and Material Design
When a material is subjected to temperature and stress, it deforms slowly resulting in permanent shape change. If the same amount of stress were applied at room temperature, the material would not budge. This deformation at high temperature under low stresses is called creep. This phenomenon is important for OEM’S like GE etc. since turbine components are exposed to low stress and high temperature and the resulting shape change is not a desirable consequence. Apart from the change in shape, the components can eventually rupture leading to catastrophic consequences. So it is imperative that the nature of this phenomenon is understood well. Some of the questions to be answered are 1) What makes one material more resistant to creep that the other 2) How can a material’s creep resistance be improved 3) How can the current creep damage in a component be measured 4) Is it possible to say what fraction of the total life of a component has been consumed by creep.