Creep and Stress Relaxation as Thermally Activated Processes

CREEP AND STRESS RELAXATION AS THERMALLY ACTIVATED PROCESSES 231 10.2.4 Comparison of single-integral models... 

Creep and Stress Relaxation as Thermally Activated Processes... 

If a constant strain is imposed on a metal or alloy, the stress relaxes with time as the system reduces its free energy. Dislocations are annihilated and the remaining dislocations move to lower-energy configurations. This is the nature of the recovery process. At higher temperatures, diffusional processes equivalent to creep occur. This phenomenon is very important for solder joints in electronic devices because the device spends much time at the strain extremes when it is turned on and off or put into a sleep mode and returned to active duty. Stress at constant strain vs. time curves for Sn-3.5Ag solder at 25 °C and 80 ° C, and at 0.3 % strain maximum are given in Fig. 6(a,b). The stress as a result of the coefficient of thermal expansion mismatches initially decreases very rapidly with time to a more or less steady state value. At 25 °C, the steady state value is about 15 MPa and is rather independent of the initial stress value however, at 80°C, the stress relaxes to zero. Thus when an electronic device is turned on, the thermal stress will relax to a low value possibly zero during use. 

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