The physical interpretation of the parameters measured during the tensile testing of materials at elevated temperatures

Abstract

Hot tensile (or compression) testing, where the stress developed in a material is measured under an imposed strain rate, is often used as an alternative to conventional creep testing. The advantages of the hot tensile test are that its duration can be more closely controlled by the experimenter and also that the technique is more convenient, since high precision testing machines are available. These factors can be particularly important when extensive testing programmes of radioactive samples are involved. The main disadvantage is that the interpretation of results is more complex. Confusion can easily arise when attempts are made to extend the use of parameters which satisfactorily categorize behaviour at lower temperatures, into regimes where concurrent thermal recovery can occur. The present paper relates the parameters which are measured in hot tensile tests, to physical processes which occur in materials deforming by a variety of mechanisms. For cases where no significant structural changes occur, as in viscous or superplastic flow, analytical expressions are derived which relate the stresses measured in these tests to material constants. When deformation is controlled by recovery processes, account has to be taken of the structural changes which occur concurrently. A wide variety of behaviour may then be exhibited which depends on the initial dislocation density, the presence of second-phase particles and the relative values of the recovery rate parameters and the velocity imposed by the testing machine. Numerical examples are provided for simple recovery models.