Steady-state creep of a pressurized thick cylinder in both the linear and the power law ranges

Summary The classical solution of the steady-state creep problem for a pressurized thick-walled cylinder is based on the power law constitutive equation. Several heat resistant steels show, however, the linear dependence of the creep rate on the applied stress within a certain stress range. In this paper we apply an extended constitutive equation which includes both the linear and the power law stress dependencies. The material constants are identified for the 9Cr1MoVNb steel at 600 °C. We recall the boundary value problem of steady-state creep for the thick cylinder under the plane strain condition. We present an approximate solution illustrating the stress redistributions as a result of the creep process. The analysis shows that for the certain range of the internal pressure both the linear and the power law creep must be taken into account. In this case the results according to the extended constitutive model essentially differ from the classical ones. The obtained solution is also applied to verify the developed user-defined creep material subroutine inside a commercial finite element code. Dedicated to Professor Franz Ziegler on the occasion of his 70th birthday