Micromechanical Modeling of Microstructural Damage in Creeping Alloys. Final Report

摘要

Fracture under service conditions at high temperatures in structures undergoing creep deformation is intergranular. Cavities on grain boundaries are produced on interfaces of hard particles during transient sliding of grain boundaries. The growth of grain boundary cavities by a combination of continuum creep and diffusional flow is often constrained by the creep deformation of the surrounding grain matrix. The constrained growth and linking of grain boundary cavities produces isolated cracked grain boundary facets which continue to grow by continuum creep and in the process accelerate overall creep flow. Cracked grain boundary facets are the principal form of creep damage, and their density per unit volume can be taken as the parameter characterizing creep damage. This damage parameter can be incorporated into three-dimensional constitutive relations of creep deformation, and these relations can be used in large strain finite element programs to solve complex engineering problems of creeping structures. All the microstructural mechanics that enter into the above description have been verified in a selection of key experiments on cavitation and crack growth. (ERA citation 10:008796)