An interactive approach to creep behavior modeling

Design and inspection of components used in high-temperature facilities, as well as evaluation of their lifespan requires detailed knowledge of creep behavior of the employed materials. Over the past decades, numerous phenomenological creep equations, describing creep strain dependency of physical quantities like time, stress or temperature via a set of parameters, have been developed. This paper deals with a novel approach of creep model parameter identification by an interactive graphical computer-based application aimed to significantly reduce evaluation time by automating necessary calculations as far as possible while, at the same time, providing a maximum of adjusting possibilities to program users—typically, materials experts. During evaluation, intermediate results are instantly displayed numerically and graphically. Verification purpose creep experiments on gradient specimens, as well as relaxation experiments, demonstrate the quality of this approach.