Investigation of stress exponent in the power-law creep of Pb–Sb alloys

The power-law creep behavior of Pb–1.25 Sb and Pb–4.5 Sb alloys was investigated at room temperature. Stress exponent values for these alloys were determined by indentation creep, conventional creep and uniaxial tension tests in order to evaluate the correspondence of indentation creep results with conventional tests. In all cases, the stress exponent values of 8–11 and 5–6, depending on the antimony content, obtained by different indentation methods were very similar. Also, it was observed that the indentation results were in good agreement with the results of the tensile and conventional creep tests. Within limits, the indentation tests are thus considered useful to acquire information on the creep behavior of antimonial lead alloys at room temperature.