Materials selection to resist creep

Abstract A design-led procedure is developed for the selection of materials to resist creep, creep fracture, creep relaxation and creep buckling. It is an extension of a successful procedure for room temperature design which uses performance indices and materials-selection charts. The extension requires the definition of a ‘design strength’, σD, which characterizes material response under conditions imposed by the design. Materials are ranked by an optimization procedure which combines σD with other properties (such as density, or cost, or stiffness) to isolate the subset which best meet the design specification.