The correlation between stress relaxation and steady-state creep of eutectic Sn-Pb

This paper surveys and compares creep and stress relaxation data on fine-grained eutectic Sn-Pb. It examines the consistency of the available data on this extensively studied solder material and studies whether stress relaxation offers a reasonable alternative to the more laborious conventional creep tests. The data survey reveals systematic differences between the creep behavior of material that is grain-refined by cold work and recrystallization ("recrystallized") and that refined by rapid solidification ("quenched"). The recrystallized material has the conventional three regimes of creep behavior: a high-stress region with a stress exponent, n ∼ 4-7 and an activation energy Q ∼ 80 kJ/ mole (a bit below that for self-diffusion of Pb and Sn), an intermediate region with n ∼ 2 and Q ∼ 45 kJ/mole (near that for grain boundary diffusion), and a low-stress region with n ∼ 3 and Q ∼ 80 (suggesting a reversion to a bulk mechanism). The quenched material shows only two regions: a high-stress creep with a stress exponent, n ∼ 3-7, and a low-stress region with n ∼ 3. The mechanisms in both regimes have activation energies intermediate between bulk and interface values (50-70 kJ/mole). With minor exceptions, the stress relaxation data and the creep data are in reasonable agreement. Most of the exceptions seem to be related to the difficulty of capturing the full details of grain boundary creep in stress relaxation tests.