Creep strength contribution due to precipitation hardening in copper–cobalt alloys

In spite of its huge technical significance, there does not seem to be consensus about how to model the precipitation contribution to the creep strength. Most contributions in the literature are based on a constant internal stress (also called back stress or threshold stress) from the precipitation. It is well-known and it will also be demonstrated in the paper that this assumption is at variance with observations except for some ODS alloys. There is, however, one model developed by Eliasson et al. (Key Eng Mater 171–174:277–284, 2000) that seems to be able to represent experimental data without the use of any adjustable parameters. It has successfully been applied to describe the creep strength of austenitic stainless steels. Due to the fact that various mechanisms contribute to the creep strength in these steels, the model has not been fully verified. The purpose of this paper is to apply the model to published creep data for Cu–Co alloys, where the precipitation totally dominates the strength contribution to validate the model. In the paper, it is demonstrated that the model can indeed describe the influence of applied stress, alloy composition and heat treatment for the three analysed Cu–Co alloys.