High temperature creep and embrittlement in metals and alloys under conditions of the long-term usage

Since the fundamental works of Kachanov and Rabotnov, creep damage mechanics is an established field of research in solid mechanics. The starting point is the creep behavior of materials under moderate loads but elevated temperatures. The final stage of creep behavior is accompanied by damage and other microstructural changes such as embrittlement. In the present paper a detailed analysis of literature is given. A special focus is made on the different types of representation of damage by scalar, vectorial and tensorial variables. In addition, some Russian sources are presented which are not widely known yet. The survey is representative, but not complete - due to the large number of sources, it is not possible to provide a complete overview. Considering the huge number of parameters of tensorial damage variables which should be established experimentally in the second part of the paper a simple model for the high temperature creep and embrittlement in metals and alloys under conditions of the long-term usage is introduced. The model is an extension of R. Arutunyan’s model developed in the 90th of the last century. The extension includes the consideration of a compressible medium, the introduction of the mass conservation law and true stress, and definition of the damage parameter as a relative change in the density of the material. The parameters are experimentally estimated and the comparison of simulations and experiments is given.