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The approaches commonly used to quantify creep and creep fracture behaviour are critically reviewed. Their limitations are illustrated by reference to information openly available for three martensitic steels, namely, grades 91, 92 and 122. Adopting traditional procedures, the creep design strengths of these 9-12% chromium steels have been reduced substantially as continuing experimental programmes have increased the maximum test durations from ,30 000 towards 100 000 h. Moreover, even when applied to comprehensive long-term data sets, the estimated 100 000 h strengths vary considerably, depending on the detailed method selected to perform the calculations. In contrast, by normalising the applied stress through the appropriate ultimate tensile strength (UTS) value, new relationships allow the multi-batch stress rupture properties at various creep temperatures to be superimposed onto sigmoidal 'master curves' using the activation energy for lattice diffusion in the alloy steel matrixes (300 kJ mol 21 ). In this way, the latest 100 000 h strengths determined from the large scale test programmes are predicted accurately by extrapolation of creep life measurements lasting less than 30 000 h, with reasonable estimates obtained even for failure times up to only 5000 h. Validation of the new methodology by analysis of results already produced for different steels and other creep-resistant alloys would therefore limit the scale and costs of current procedures for acquisition of long-term engineering design data.

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Although a transition from transgranular to intergranular fracture occurs and the tempered bainite microstructure evolves during creep exposure, new relationships allow rationalisation and extrapolation of the multibatch creep data sets reported for 1Cr-1Mo-0?25V steel. Specifically, analyses of results from tests lasting only up to 5000 h accurately predict the minimum creep rates, the times to various strains and the creep lives for stress-temperature conditions causing failure in 100 000 h and more. Validation of this new methodology would therefore offer the prospect of cost effective acquisition of long term creep design data.

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Impressive data sets have been produced for 316H stainless steel (18Cr-12Ni-Mo with up to 0.08C) by the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, to reveal the dependencies on stress and temperature of the high-temperature creep and creep fracture behaviour of nine batches of tube, six of bar and two of plate. Using these long-term property values, the stresses to produce failure in 100,000h at various plant exposure temperatures have been determined using the Manson-Haferd parameter. However, by incorporating the 0.2% proof stresses and ultimate tensile strengths of each batch of material at the creep temperatures, new relationships allow accurate prediction of the allowable tensile creep stresses using data from tests lasting only up to 5000h. Moreover, all of these results can be interpreted straightforwardly in terms of the dislocation processes controlling creep strain accumulation and the cavitation damage causing creep failure.