Materials are often placed in service at ‘relatively high temperatures’ and exposed to static mechanical stresses. These stresses are less than the yield strength of the material but nevertheless can cause plastic deformation to take place – particularly over a long period of service time. This phenomenon is known as creep. Note that the term ‘relatively high temperatures’ means high homologous temperatures (Tservice/Tmelting) and is a measure of how near the temperature is to the melting point of the material concerned, as shown in Figure 9 of Mechanical properties of metals.
So room temperature (20°C) is a low homologous temperature for steel (melting point around 1600°C), but is a high homologous temperature for tin-lead solder (melting point around 180°C).
Creep is observed in all material types – in metals it only becomes important at temperatures greater than about 0.4Tm (where Tm is the melting point in Kelvin). Soft metals such as tin and lead creep at room temperature while aluminium and its alloys creep around 250°C. Steel creeps at about 450°C while nickel-based alloys (nimonics) creep at around 650°C. A typical creep curve is shown in Figure 9.