Advanced Procedures for Long-Term Creep Data Prediction for 2.25 Chromium Steels

A critical review of recent creep studies concluded that traditional approaches such as steady-state behavior, power law equations, and the view that diffusional creep mechanisms are dominant at low stresses should be seriously reconsidered. Specifically, creep strain rate against time curves show that a decaying primary rate leads into an accelerating tertiary stage, giving a minimum rather than a secondary period. Conventional steady-state mechanisms should therefore be abandoned in favor of an understanding of the processes governing strain accumulation and the damage phenomena causing tertiary creep and fracture. Similarly, creep always takes place by dislocation processes, with no change to diffusional creep mechanisms with decreasing stress, negating the concept of deformation mechanism maps. Alternative descriptions are then provided by normalizing the applied stress through the ultimate tensile stress and yield stress at the creep temperature. In this way, the resulting Wilshire equations allow accurate prediction of 100,00 hours of creep data using only property values from tests lasting 5000 hours for a series of 2.25 chromium steels, namely grades 22, 23, and 24.