Abstract
It is shown that the creep deformation resistance of a variety of metals is reduced by repeated reversed deformation at temperatures above 0.4Tm, where Tm is the absolute melting temperature of each metal. The reduction of creep deformation resistance due to stress reversals is most prominent at approximately 0.5Tm where the average creep rate may increase by as much as a factor of twenty due to 50-100 stress reversals. Metallographic studies show that the observed acceleration of creep at high temperatures is in part due to the enhancement of grain boundary sliding as a result of gradual grain boundary migration toward planes of maximum shear stress during reversed creep deformation.
