Impression Creep Behavior of a Cast AZ91 Magnesium Alloy

The creep behavior of the cast AZ91 magnesium alloy was investigated by impression testing. The tests were carried out under constant punching stress in the range 100 to 650 MPa, corresponding to 0.007 <= sigma(imp)/G <= 0.044, at temperatures in the range 425 to 570 K. Assuming a power-law relationship between the impression velocity and stress, depending on the testing temperature, stress exponents of 4.2 to 6.0 were obtained. When the experimental creep rates were normalized to the grain size and effective diffusion coefficient, a stress exponent of approximately 5 was obtained, which is in complete agreement with stress exponents determined by the conventional creep testing of the same material reported in the literature. Calculation of the activation energy showed a slight decrease in the activation energy with increasing stress such that the creep-activation energy of 122.9 kJ/mol at sigma(imp)/G = 0.020 decreases to 94.0 kJ/mol at sigma(imp)/G = 0.040. Based on the obtained stress exponents and activation energy data, it is proposed that dislocation climb is the controlling creep mechanism. However, due to the decreasing trend of creep-activation energy with stress, it is suggested that two parallel mechanisms of lattice and pipe-diffusion-controlled dislocation climb are competing. To elucidate the contribution of each mechanism to the overall creep deformation, the creep rates were calculated based on the effective activation energy. This yielded a criterion that showed that, in the high-stress regimes, the experimental activation energies fall in the range in which the operative creep mechanism is dislocation climb controlled by dislocation pipe diffusion. In the low-stress regime, however, the lattice-diffusion dislocation climb is dominant.