Engineering Physics of High-Temperature Materials. Nirmal K. Sinha
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СКАЧАТЬ development of knowledge in all branches of science and engineering has been so varied and rapid during the last century that it has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to pay attention to different fields outside of their own expertise. As time progresses, each and every branch of scientific endeavor is getting subdivided and micro‐ divided, with specific jargon developing even within micro units, making it even more difficult to communicate with each other across specialties. The physics and engineering of high‐temperature materials is one such special area, and yet it touches many fields in many ways.

      There is an ever‐growing number of human‐made materials like ceramics, metallic alloys, and superalloys used specifically in high‐temperature applications in areas such as the nuclear, chemical and aerospace industries. This may also include materials developed by design on the basis of nanotechnology and grain‐boundary engineering for very specific uses. Then, there are rocks of geophysical interest (such as with respect to tectonics and post‐glacial uplifting) existing at high temperatures within the depths of Earth and floating on magma, and ice (freshwater and saline sea ice) floating in its molten state in lakes and oceans. It would be impossible to cover all the complicated phenomena of different materials in a single book. However, the principal strengths of a book like the present one is the manner in which it covers many different materials all together. This could also be a weakness if descriptions are not clear enough to facilitate an understanding of the complicated physics and mechanics in widely differing materials. Some difficulties can be overcome by restricting topics relevant only to inorganic crystalline materials that would include the most abundant materials on Earth – ice and rocks, in addition to manu‐made (gender‐neutral term derived from Manushya in Sanskrit) and manufactured metallic‐based engineering materials used in various industries such as aerospace, power generation, and nuclear technology. Further obstacles can be removed by concentrating on materials at or used at high homologous temperatures greater than about one‐third of the melting point, T m in Kelvin. In this manner, it is indeed possible to draw attention to a common string that unites most, if not all, apparently different polycrystalline materials and topics. Many time‐honored, empirically derived relations will be explained on the basis of a simple, microstructure‐sensitive, Elasto – Delayed‐Elastic – Viscous (EDEV) model.

      High‐temperature materials science and engineering sounds like a specialized branch of applied science, but it can actually be considered as one of the most general areas of modern science and technology. This book is prepared with the intention of making it known that apparently dissimilar polycrystalline materials, such as metals, alloys, ice, rocks, and ceramics – and even glassy materials – behave in a very similar manner at high temperatures. This book, therefore, is aimed at a variety of experts, such as metallurgists to metal physicists, glaciologists to ice engineers, solid‐earth geophysics, earth scientists to volcanologists, and cryospheric and interdisciplinary climate scientists. The critical question addressed is, what is really meant by “high temperature,” and why? What is the microstructural‐based rationale for defining high temperatures?

      As mentioned earlier, a constitutive model, named as the Elasto – Delayed‐Elastic – Viscous (EDEV) model, was developed that recognizes delayed elasticity (that can be measured experimentally for quantitative verifications) as one of the most important aspects of high‐temperature engineering materialogy. As this text will show, it has been demonstrated that delayed elastic strain plays crucial roles in governing every aspect of primary (often called transient) creep curves and engineering stress‐strain diagrams and strain‐rate‐dependent strength (such as 0.2% offset yield and ultimate strength) properties. Finally, and very importantly, grain‐facet size cracks are initiated during primary creep, when des reaches a critical stage (Chapters 5, 6). The kinetics of microcracking and crack‐enhanced viscous (or dislocation) creep, essence of the EDEV model, leads to tertiary or accelerating stages in constant‐stress creep or constant strain‐rate deformation (Chapters 7, 8). The processes of grain‐boundary shearing (often referred to as sliding in the literature) induce recoverable delayed elastic strains. The grain‐boundary shearing mechanisms also govern the initial-strain (or initial-constrain) sensitivity of stress‐relaxation (SR) at high homologous temperatures, as presented in Chapter 9. The crack‐enhanced EDEV model, therefore, provides a physics‐based elucidation for the phenomenological observations on a huge number of engineering materials. And the methodology is very simple. Material characteristics for creep, and the kinetics of grain‐facet size cracking during creep, like those provided in Table 7.1 for ice, can be obtained for other materials by performing the appropriate strain relaxation and recovery test (SRRT) (Chapter 4), including the use of acoustic emission (AE) technology, and emphasizing, of course, evaluation of recoverable delayed elastic response.