Laboratory 5: Creep testing

Laboratory 5
Creep Testing
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Objectives
Students are required to study the principal of creep testing and practice the testing
procedure.
Students are capable of acquiring and interpreting the creep data obtained from
creep testing of lead which readily creep at room temperature.
Students should be able to explain the causes of creep in metals, creep deformation
and be able to indicate factors influencing creep behavior in metals.
Students can analyze the obtained creep data and use it for the selection of
appropriate engineering materials to prevent creep failures.

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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

1. Literature review
1.1 Creep in metals
When metals experience plastic deformation or has been mechanically deformed at room
temperature, strain hardening or work hardening takes place. We have already encountered this
phenomenon from the stress-strain curve obtained from tensile testing of materials. When the stress is
beyond the yield stress, work hardening occurs due to multiplication and movement of dislocations.
Conversely, annealing of the metals after have been plastically deformed allows annihilation of
dislocations, thus reducing the strength of the metals. However, when metals are continuously and
plastically deformed at high temperature, both work hardening and annealing take place
simultaneously, and creep in metals will result.
Creep testing aims to investigate plastic deformation of a material when subjected to a
constant load or stress at a high temperature. High temperature allows metal to deform more easily
since atoms can move more readily, hence, greater movement of dislocations or slips. New slip
systems and grain-boundary movement are also possible at higher temperatures. Therefore,
engineering alloys utilized at high temperatures is susceptible to creep as well as recrystallization and
grain coarsening. In the case of age-hardened metals, over-ageing is feasible, which results in reduced
hardness and strength due to the coarsening of the second phase precipitates. Furthermore, metals
generally oxidize at high temperatures, thus experiencing creep problems. The development of new
alloys is therefore on its way in order to combat these problems and provide materials with enhanced
mechanical properties. This is for example, the development of nickel base alloys used for aerospace
and high-performance applications.
Generally, metals creep at a temperature above approximately 0.4 Tm (Tm is the absolute
temperature of the metal). Therefore, low melting point metals will creep at lower temperature in
comparison to high melting point metals. This is for example; lead having its melting point of 326oC
will creep at room temperature. Iron on the other hand having a higher melting point will creep at the
temperature of approximately 650oC.
Engineering applications such as steam engines, oil refinery and chemical industry normally
operate at temperatures around 500oC. The operating temperatures of the aeroengines, space rockets
missiles are even higher (around 1000oC), which necessitate materials with high creep resistance.
Due to a significant degradation of mechanical properties with time, structural materials can generally
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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

withstand mechanical loading at high temperatures in a certain period of time (strong time dependence
of strength). Maintenance or replacing of new materials is therefore necessary for safety reasons.
Unlike creep, mechanical loading at room temperature however do not exhibit strong
dependence of hardness or strength with time. Furthermore, it should be noted that creep testing is
noticeably different from high-temperature tensile testing. For example, a high temperature tensile
test requires less time to actually finish the test, i.e., testing of materials used for missile cases. Creep
properties on the other hand are necessary for materials used for steam pipelines. The creep test in
this case might require 10,000 hrs to finish the test. Therefore, creep study is required for materials
subjected to high temperatures in extended period of time to prevent creep failure during service
operations.

Figure 1: Creep testing configuration showing specimen fitted in the testing machine coupled with a
high temperature furnace.
1.2 Creep test and creep curve
The creep test is carried out to investigate any dimensional changes of specimen with time
during high temperature test. Typically, a creep specimen is gripped at both ends (similar to that of
tensile test) encased with a furnace set at a desired test temperature as shown in figure 1 a). While a
constant load is applied, time and dimensional change are recorded and plotted to give a creep curve
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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

as illustrated in figure 2. In the laboratory, an SM106 Mk II Apparatus is used for creep testing as
shown in figure 1 b). The test specimens are made from lead, which readily creep at room
temperature. The specimen is attached to one end of the lever arm where the other end is hung by the
known weights. The weights provide the tensile force pulling the specimen and the force can be
calculated by taking moment about the pivot bearing as shown in equation 1.
F = (2.84 + 8m) g

where F

is the tensile force, Newton

is the mass of the weight, g

is the specific gravity = 9.8 g/m2

9 (1)

The dial gauge is employed to measure any dimensional change of the specimen during the
test. However, the position of the dial gauge from the specimen is twice the distance of the specimen
to the pivot. Therefore, the actual dimensional change of the specimen is approximately haft of the
extension indicating from the dial gauge. Moreover, if the test is intended for higher or lower
temperature conditions, the hot pack and the cold pack are used respectively. The hot pack is placed
in the hot water for 15-20 minutes before fitting in the perspex encapsulation attached with a
thermometer for temperature control. The temperature should not exceed 70oC to avoid hot pack
damage. Similarly, the cold pack is freezed before putting in the compartment before testing is
carried out. The temperature should be stabilized for at least 10-15 minutes prior to testing.
Nevertheless, each metal creeps at different rate and thus require different time to finish the
test, ranging from minutes, hours, days, weeks or months. According to the typical creep curve in
figure 1, it should be noticed that the creep curve can be divided into three main stages; primary,
secondary and tertiary creeps. Each stage of creep behavior is influenced from both work hardening
and annealing mechanisms occurring at the same time. However, work hardening and annealing will
take place at different rates depending on response of metals to applied tensile force with time. The
creep rate therefore changes accordingly. This should now be mentioned in details as follows.
The primary creep or transient creep exhibits a decreasing creep rate with time as shown in
figure 1. A very sharp increase in the initial stage is observed with the original strain, o, taking place
before the creep rate starts to decrease. The creep rate then diminishes until reaching the secondary
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creep region as detailed in figure 1. This diminished creep rate in the primary creep region accounts
from work hardening mechanism of the metal. Multiplication and interaction of dislocations rule out
the annealing effect at this stage, resulting in increasing the creep resistance of the metal. Metals,
such as lead that can creep readily at room temperature, exhibit an obvious primary creep.
Beyond the primary stage, the creep rate is reaching a steady state where the creep rate is said
to be relatively constant with time and gives the minimum creep rate of all the three regions. This
minimum creep rate is used to represent the creep rate of the metal being tested at particular test
temperature and load. The constant creep rate is due to balancing of strain hardening and annealing
(recovery) processes according to the applied stress and temperature. The amount of dislocations
being generated by work hardening is equal to the number of dislocations being annealed out. The
secondary creep exhibits a relatively linear relationship between strain and time, and the slope

obtained represents the creep rate, , of the metal, as expressed in equation 2.

d
dt

9 (2)

The secondary creep rate depends strongly on stress and temperature, which can be expressed
in the equation of the type

= A n e E RT

9 (3)

where A and n are constants

E is the activation energy for creep in the metal
R is the universal gas constant (8.31 J/mol K)
According to equation 3, it can be seen that raising either stress or temperature results in
increasing creep rates. The stress exponent n can be determined by taking the natural logarithms of

this equation as shown in equation 4 and then plotting ln and ln . The relationship between ln
and ln is essentially linear and its slope represents the stress exponent n value.

ln = ln A + n ln

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E
RT

9 (4)
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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

For engineering design point of view, materials subjected to creep in operation should limit
its use in the secondary creep stage and should never enter the tertiary creep stage. Since the
secondary creep gives the longest operating time without creep failure, the materials whose secondary
creep rate is as small as possible are good candidates for engineering applications subjected to creep
failure.
The tertiary creep region gives a rapid creep rate approaching failure. This is due to the
formation of necking. Load bearing capability decreases due to the simultaneous reduction in the
cross-sectional area of the specimen, which is related to local stress acting on this area. Furthermore,
tertiary creep is associated with microstructural alterations due to increasing temperature such as
coarsening of precipitate phases, recrystallization and diffusion of phases. These mechanisms
effectively increase the tertiary creep rate, and eventually leads to fracture under creep.

Figure 2: Creep curve.

However, factors influencing the shape of the creep curve depend on the levels of the stress
and temperatures involved. If the temperature is remained constant, the creep curves will shift
upward and to the left with increasing applied stresses as shown in figure 3. Similarly, if the creep
test is carried out at various temperatures but at a constant stress level, the creep rate will increase
with increasing temperatures.

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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

Figure 3: Effects of stress levels on the shape of creep curves at a constant temperature.
A plot of creep rate and strain in a log-log scale as illustrated in figure 4 shows a curve which
can be again divided into three stages. It can be noticed that the second stage exhibits a linear
relationship of creep rate and strain while the first and third stages shows decreasing and increasing
creep rates with strain respectively. Since the stress and temperature are kept constant, the variation
of the creep rate is therefore owing to microstructural alteration due to strain and increasing time.
This type of curve is normally applied for engineering design.

Figure 4: Relationship between creep rate and total strain in a log-log scale.
1.2 Deformation processes at elevated temperature
Microstructural changes of metals due to plastic deformation at high temperature results
primarily from 1) dislocation movement (slip), 2) subgrain formation and 3) grain boundary sliding.
High temperature deformation normally produces coarser and wider-spaced slip bands than those
achieved at room temperature. Local strains occur for example at grain boundaries, and cannot be
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observed from the creep curve. At increasing temperatures, slip systems are more available. For
aluminium alloys, slip planes {111}, {100} and {211} are operative at temperatures above 260oC
whereas, zinc and magnesium have non-basal plane slips which are working at high temperature.
The formation of subgrains normally in the adjacent of the grain boundaries results from
lattice distortion. This allows dislocations with opposite signs form the subgrains. The formation of
the subgrains is usually observed in materials with high stacking fault energy. The size of the
subgrains depends on the level of stress and temperature applied. Grain boundary sliding involves a
shear process along the grain boundaries, providing a non-uniform amount of shear displacement. It
was found that the increasing strain due to grain boundary sliding varies directly to the total strain
observed in the creep test. Apart from the processes mentioned previously, plastic deformation of
metals at high temperatures also results from multiple slip, course slip bands, kink bands, fold
formation at grain boundary and grain boundary migration.

Figure 5: Fracture mechanism map for nickel [1].

1.3 Fracture at elevated temperature
High temperature deformation of metals can initiate a crack, which leads to final failure. Slip
planes operating at ambient temperature require relatively lower strength within the grain than those at
the grain boundaries. Cracks are then initiated at inclusions or defects, which act stress concentration
and eventually cause transgranular brittle fracture. At higher temperatures, grain-boundary movement
is prevalent, giving the strength of the grain boundaries to be lower than that of grain interiors. This
in turn results in grain boundary fracture or intergranular fracture at high temperatures. The fracture
energy is lower in this case. Figure 5 shows fracture mechanism map of nickel at various levels of
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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

stresses and temperatures where the homologous temperature is the test temperature divided by the
melting point of the metal. The fracture mechanism map is useful for the prediction of fracture
mechanisms in engineering materials at particular stress and temperature ranges.
1.4 Interpretation of engineering creep data
In order to select proper materials for high temperature applications, it is necessary to acquire
accurate design parameters such as creep strength from experimental. The creep strength can be
defined as 1) the stress at a given temperature to produce a steady-state creep rate of a fixed amount
(normally at 10-11 to 10-8 s-1 or, 2) the stress to produce creep strain at 1 percent of the total creep
strain at a given test temperature (usually 1000, 10000, or 100000 hours).
The influence of stress levels on minimum creep rate is shown in figure 6. The minimum
creep rate is found to increase with increasing stress levels, giving a linear relationship. The test
temperature is also shown to affect the creep strength of 316 stainless steel observed. As the
temperature increases, the stress level that gives the minimum creep rate reduces accordingly.

Figure 6: Stress vs minimum creep rate of a 316 stainless steel.

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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

2. Materials and equipment

2.1 Creep specimens made from lead
2.2 Micrometer or vernia caliper
2.3 Permanent pen
2.4 Creep testing machine
2.5 Hot and cold bags
2.6 Thermometer
3. Experimental procedure
3.1 Measure and record lead specimen dimensions for the calculation of stress and strain from the
creep test.
3.2 Fit a lead specimen on a creep test machine as shown in figure 7 with a dial gauge positioned
in a mid range of the specimen gauge length for the calculation of specimen extension (creep
strain).
3.3 Hung the weights of known values at the end of the sample to determine the applied stress.
Specimen extension will be read on the dial gauge and time is recorded using a stopped
watch.
3.4 When the weight is left hanging, the specimen will be immediately strained. The time will be
recorded at every specimen extension of 0.5 mm. Repeat the test using a new specimen
having a similar test condition to give an average value of the creep rate obtained.
3.5 Repeat the creep tests but now using different weights provided (to give different stress
levels) to investigate the effect of stress levels on the creep rate of the specimen.
3.6 Construct the creep curves from the obtained experimental data similar to that shown in
figure 2.
3.7 Analyze and discuss the creep rate of each experimental set as well as fracture surfaces. Give
conclusions.

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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

4. Results
Details

Specimen
1

Specimen length (mm)

Specimen width (mm)
Cross-sectional area (mm2)
Weight (g)
Stress (MPa)
Creep rate (sec-1)
Fracture details

Table 1: Creep test data of lead specimens.

Figure 7: Creep curves of lead specimens at different stress levels used in the test conditions.
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Laboratory 5: Creep testing

5. Discussion
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6. Conclusions
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7. Questions
7.1 Why do you think that lead creeps at room temperature? Explain.
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7.2 What would have happened if this experiment was set at temperatures below subzero and
water boiling point?
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7.3 Explain the differences between creep testing and stress rupture testing.
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8. References
8.1 SM106 Creep machine, TQ education and training ltd product division.
8.2 Dieter, G.E., Mechanical metallurgy, 1988, SI metric edition, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07100406-8.
8.3 Hashemi, S. Foundations of materials science and engineering, 2006, 4th edition, McGrawHill, ISBN 007-125690-3

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