Carefully designed indentation creep experiments and detailed finite-element computations were carried out in order to establish a robust and systematic method to extract creep properties accurately during indentation creep tests. Samples made from an Al–5.3mol%Mg solid-solution alloy were tested at temperatures ranging from 573 to 773K. Finite-element simulations confirmed that, for a power-la...

Silicon in single crystal form has been the material of choice for the first demonstration of the MIT microengine project. However, because it has a relatively low melting temperature, silicon is not an ideal material for the intended operational environment of high temperature and stress. In addition, preliminary work indicates that single crystal silicon has a tendency to undergo localized de...

Creep tests of the polycrystalline nickel alloy Waspaloy have been conducted at Swansea University, for varying stress conditions at 700 °C. Investigation through use of Transmission Electron Microscopy at Cambridge University has examined the dislocation networks formed under these conditions, with particular attention paid to comparing tests performed above and below the yield stress. This pa...

In this study, a large number of creep tests were carried out to study the effect of stress level and testing temperature on the creep behavior of 63 Sn/37Pb solder in a systematic manner. Based on the dislocation controlled creep mechanism and Gibbs’ free-energy theory, a new creep constitutive model was proposed. The model was found to describe accurately the creep flow of the solder and to b...

Static and completely reversed cyclic creep acceleration characteristics of Al – 22 wt% Ag alloy were investigated using a modified tensile testing machine. Different amplitudes of reversed cyclic stress (σrev) ranging from 7.2 to 10.2 MPa at different working temperatures ranging from 353 K to 413 K were performed. To get a relation between aging temperature and threshold stress (σth) for cycl...

Demand for long-term reliability of electronic packaging has lead to a large number of studies on viscoplastic behavior of solder alloys. Various creep models for solder alloys have been proposed. They range from purely empirical to mechanism based models where dislocation motion and diffusion processes are taken into account. In this study, most commonly used creep models are compared with the...

We report exceptional ductile behavior in individual double-walled and triple-walled carbon nanotubes at temperatures above 2000 degrees C, with tensile elongation of 190% and diameter reduction of 90%, during in situ tensile-loading experiments conducted inside a high-resolution transmission electron microscope. Concurrent atomic-scale microstructure observations reveal that the superelongatio...

We simulate the glide motion of an assembly of interacting dislocations under the action of an external shear stress and show that the associated plastic creep relaxation follows Andrade's law. Our results indicate that Andrade creep in plastically deforming crystals involves the correlated motion of dislocation structures near a dynamic transition separating a flowing from a jammed phase. Simu...

Understanding the deformation mechanisms of olivine is important for addressing the dynamic processes in Earth's upper mantle. It has been thought that dislocation creep is the dominant mechanism because of extrapolated laboratory data on the plasticity of olivine at pressures below 0.5 GPa. However, we found that dislocation-accommodated grain boundary sliding (DisGBS), rather than dislocation...

The compressive creep deforrn;~tiort microstructure of polycrystalline Ni3AI h:is been observed by transnlission electron microscopy (TEM). ( 1 1 I ) rind ( 110) slip systems have been identified in primary creep. Dissociatiort of edge superparti:~l pairs perpendicular to the slip plane (both { 11 1 ) and ( 110) ) is common in crept specimens. I'he formation of this superdislocation...