Creep in high temperature tensile testing of rhenium

Abstract

Tremendous scatter exists in the reported values for the elastic modulus of rhenium at high temperatures (0.3Tm 0.7Tm) where creep becomes nonneglible. Most of the reported modulus values were based on the initial slope of the stress strain curves from uni-axial tensile tests. This paper presents the results of an analysis of high temperature tensile testing of rhenium. A rhenium creep model was developed based on a conglomeration of previously published creep data for several material forms. Estimated stress strain curves are presented for typical tensile test conditions at high temperatures based on the creep model. Effects of variations in test temperature, strain rate, and elastic modulus are examined. At high temperature (2300K), creep effects dominate the rhenium tensile tests. Analysis results indicate that at high temperature (2300K) the stressstrain curves are dominated by strain rate and are relatively insensitive to variations in the elastic modulus.