The interaction of ductile tearing and creep crack growth

This paper proposes that the combined effects of ductile tearing and creep crack growth may be assessed by simple linear addition of the separately assessed crack growth components. Some limited comparisons with experimental data are made using results from compact tension tests on austenitic Type 316H stainless steel. It is demonstrated that experimental creep crack growth data can be misinterpreted if the data are not corrected for both ductile tearing and plastic displacement. However, these two effects tend to balance each other so that it is preferable to correct for neither rather than for only one factor. Alternatively, it is shown that the time dependent failure assessment diagram approach for creep crack growth can automatically handle tearing-creep interactions by a suitable definition of toughness which does not separate tearing from creep crack growth or plastic displacement from creep displacement. © 2015 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.