A theory for creep by interfacial flaw growth in ceramics and ceramic composites

The nucleation and growth of flaws along grain boundaries and interfaces are known to cause significant reductions in elastic moduli and to play an important role in determining the deformation characteristics of ceramic materials at elevated temperatures. This paper presents an analysis of the creep behavior of deteriorating elastic solids where the principal mechanism of deformation is the growth of intergranular or interfacial flaws. The changes in elastic moduli induced by the growth of internal damage are used to derive the stress exponent in the power-law creep regime. When the flaws advance at a rate which is proportional to the local normal stress or normal strain, a power-law creep exponent of 2 is predicted for short time, steady-state creep for a population of aligned slit cracks and randomly oriented penny-shaped cracks. For long-time creep, the variation of nonsteady state creep strain rate as a function of the far-field stress and time is explicitly determined. General solutions for creep strain rates are also presented for situations where the microcrack growth rate has a power-law dependence on the local normal stress or stress intensity factor. The predicted dependence of creep strain rate on the far-field stress, the progression of damage and the consequent reduction in elastic moduli, overall creep ductility, and implications pertaining to microstructural and temperature effects on creep are found to be in accord with a wide variety of experimental observations for ceramics and ceramic composites. The temperature, stress and material conditions for which the proposed mechanism is applicable are discussed and a general theory of creep damage in progressively microfracturing elastic brittle solids is developed.