Dear Colleagues,

Although creep in metals and alloys has been intensively studied for 80 years, our understanding remains largely phenomenological and incapable of making a priori predictions about component-scale behavior, particularly in novel or complex alloys. Creep resistance remains a limiting property in many applications of the transportation and energy sectors, ranging from aircraft engines to nuclear power plants and metal solid-state batteries.

Although laboratory-scale development of novel metals and alloys has been rapid, high-quality creep data remain rare for new materials, e.g., refractory element-based alloys and metal matrix composites. The need for test data applies not only to new alloy systems but also to new processing modes for well-established alloys such as those produced by the disruptive technology of additive manufacturing.

While uniaxial tensile creep testing is still highly relevant, especially in comparison to historical datasets, cutting-edge techniques increasingly provide new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of creep deformation. Examples of these techniques include in situ testing in electron microscopes or high-energy X-ray sources, creep experiments under multi-axial stress states, combined creep-fatigue testing, and small-scale testing via indentation creep experiments. Furthermore, the rapid advances in characterization methods such as ECCI, atomic-resolution TEM, or atom-probe tomography facilitate an extremely detailed analysis of the acting deformation mechanisms.

Finally, the increased performance and availability of computing resources have allowed various methods of modeling and simulation to move far beyond the traditional temperature, time, and volume scale limits of 0 K, ~ns, and ~1 nm³, respectively. These computational tools are increasingly relevant for describing the deformation mechanisms, microstructure, deformation substructure evolution, and ultimately the macroscopic creep behavior of simple and complex alloys.

This Special Issue will showcase the creep performance of novel materials and highlight recent advances in creep experimentation, characterization, and scale-bridging simulation.

This Special Issue also contains selected papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Creep and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures, which is organized as a virtual event from 13 to 17 June 2021. This conference follows the long-standing tradition of the Swansea conferences, which were initiated by Prof. Brian Wilshire and held in Swansea from 1981 to 1993 on a triennial basis. Later, the Creep conferences also took place in London, UK (1995), Irvine, USA (1997), Tsukuba, Japan (1999), again at Swansea, UK (2001), Pittsburgh, USA (2005), Bayreuth, Germany (2008), Kyoto, Japan (2012), Toulouse, France (2015), and Saint Petersburg, Russia (2017). The objective of CREEP 2020 is to provide an opportunity for scientists and engineers to come together and share their experience and knowledge in order to discuss the recent progress concerning creep mechanisms and modeling and to explore advanced experimental testing methods, materials and applications.

Dr. Christopher H. Zenk
Dr. Connor E. Slone
Dr. Steffen Neumeier
Guest Editors

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• Creep deformation
• Novel metals and alloys
• Additively manufactured alloys
• Rejuvenated components
• In-situ creep experiments
• Multi-axial creep testing
• Creep deformation mechanisms
• Correlative characterization
• Modeling and simulation
• Data science and machine learning