Creep and creep-fatigue crack growth

Creep and creep-fatigue considerations are important in predicting the remaining life and safe inspection intervals as part of maintenance programs for components operating in harsh, high temperature environments. Time-dependent deformation associated with creep alters the crack tip stress fields established as part of initial loading which must be addressed in any viable theory to account for creep in the vicinity of crack tips. This paper presents a critical assessment of the current state-of-the-art of time-dependent fracture mechanics (TDFM) concepts, test techniques, and applications and describes these important developments that have occurred over the past three decades. It is concluded that while big advances have been made in TDFM, the capabilities to address some significant problems still remain unresolved. These include (a) elevated temperature crack growth in creep-brittle materials used in gas turbines but now also finding increasing use in advanced power-plant components (b) in predicting crack growth in weldments that inherently have cracks or crack-like defects in regions with microstructural gradients (c) in development of a better fundamental understanding of creep-fatigue-environment interactions, and (d) in prognostics of high temperature component reliability. It is also argued that while these problems were considered intractable a few years ago, the advances in technology do make it possible to systematically address them now and advance TDFM to its next level in addressing the more difficult but real engineering problems.