A unified multiscale ductility exhaustion based approach to predict uniaxial, multiaxial creep rupture and crack growth.

Numerical and analytical methods for predicting uniaxial damage have largely depended on the constituent components of the stress/strain measured data which have inherent scatter. Models developed for this purpose have also attempted, with some degree of success, to address the fundamental issues of failure mechanisms within a multiaxial stress state context. This paper presents a new analytical/empirical/a postpriori unifying approach to predict creep damage and rupture under uniaxial/multiaxial and crack growth conditions by deriving a multiscale based constraint criterion. Essentially, the model links the global constraint due to geometry in a globally isotropic material with a microstructural constraint arising from creep diffusional processes occurring in a sub-grain locally anisotropic microstructure. Furthermore, it is shown that the model is consistent with the established NSW crack growth model (Nikbin et al., 1984, 1986; Tan et al., 2001) which is routinely used to determine the plane stress/strain bounds for cracking rates in fracture mechanics geometries and cracked components. The concept assumes that at very short times an initial upper shelf material tensile strength and global plasticity and power law creep control creep damage failure and sub grain multiaxial axial stress state dependent failure strain dominates the long term diffusion/dislocation controlled creep response. It is established that the material yield strength in the short term and a measure of creep failure strain at the creep secondary/tertiary transition region described at the limits by the Monkman-Grant failure strain (Monkman and Grant, 1963), are the important variables in both the uniaxial and multiaxial failure processes. For verification creep constitutive properties from long term data from uniaxial and multiaxial and crack growth tests on Grade P91/92 martensitic steels from various databases (EPRI, private communications; NIMS data base), are used to establish the procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]