This open access book features an in-depth exploration of the intricate creep behavior exhibited by metallic materials, with a specific focus on elucidating the underlying mechanical properties governing their response at elevated temperatures, particularly in the context of polycrystalline alloys. 

Creep and Creep Rupture of Metals is devoted to the fundamental description of the phenomenon of creep which occurs widely in high-temperature deformation of metals. 

Special attention is paid to the analysis of long-term strength, which characterizes the stress at which the metal does not fail after a predetermined time. 

The author details experimental and theoretical results obtained by Soviet and Russian scientists that are absent in currently available publications and demonstrates analytical methods and approaches to achieve long term strength in Metals.

By the late 1940s, and since then, the continuous development of dislocation theories have provided the basis for correlating the macroscopic time-dependent deformation of metals and alloys--known as creep--to the time-dependent processes taking place within the metals and alloys. High-temperature deformation and stress relaxation effects have also been explained and modeled on similar bases.

Unique in its approach, this introduction to the physics of creep concentrates on the physical principles underlying observed phenomena. As such it provides a resource for graduate students in materials science, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, physics and chemistry as well as researchers in other fields. 

Following a brief mathematical treatment, the authors introduce creep phenomena together with some empirical laws and observations. The mechanisms of creep and diffusion under varying experimental conditions are subsequently analysed and developed. 

This reference guide brings together a wide range of critical data on the effect of creep and other long term effects on plastics and elastomers, enabling engineers to make optimal material choices and design decisions. 

Stress Analysis for Creep focuses on methods on creep analysis. The book first ponders on the occurrence of creep in mechanical engineering components, including background to stress analysis for creep and general-purpose computer programs for creep analysis. The text presents a phenomenological description of creep. The phenomenon of creep, physical mechanisms of creep, convenient uniaxial constitutive relationships, and creep rupture are described. 

This book serves both as a textbook and a scientific work. As a textbook, the work gives a clear, thorough and systematic presentation of the fundamental postulates, theorems and principles and their applications of the classical mathematical theories of plasticity and creep. In addition to the mathematical theories, the physical theory of plasticity, the book presents the Budiansky concept of slip and its modification by M. Leonov. 

Although the present edition of Fundamentals of Creep in Metals and Alloys remains broadly up to date for metals, there are a range of improvements and updates that are either desirable, or required, in order to ensure that the book continues to meet the needs of researchers and scholars in the general area of creep plasticity. 

Our rationale for the second edition remains the same as for the first edition, which appeared over twenty years ago. This is to offer simplified, useful and easily understood methods for dealing with the creep of components operating under conditions met in practice. When the first edition was written, we could not claim that the methods which were introduced were well-tried. 

The simplest way to formulate the basic equations of continuum mechanics and the constitutive or evolutional equations of various materials is to restrict ourselves to rectangular cartesian coordinates. However, solving particular problems, for instance in Chapter 5, it may be preferable to work in terms of more suitable coordinate systems and their associated bases.