Investigation of residual stress effects on creep crack initiation and growth using local out-of-plane compression

The effects of residual stress on creep crack initiation and growth behavior were investigated. It has been shown that higher compressive residual stress ahead of crack tips delays creep crack initiation and increases creep initiation life. The mechanism of residual stress effect on the creep crack initiation behavior was analyzed by distributions of equivalent stress and stress triaxiality ahead of crack tips. The residual stress essentially has no effect on creep crack growth rate. In creep life assessments of high temperature components, the effect of residual stress on creep crack initiation should be mainly considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.