Creep-recovery deformation of 304 stainless-steel springs under low forces

The deformation behavior of materials at high temperatures determines the structural stability of mechanical structures under high-temperature service conditions. In this work, we prepare helical springs from 304 stainless-steel wires and study creep-recovery deformation of the helical springs under small forces at temperatures of 475–575 °C. In contrast to most methods reported in the literature, we use Kelvin representation of the Burgers model with a nonlinear dashpot in series connection to analyze the creep-recovery deformation of the helical springs and suggest the deformation mechanisms of the diffusion of interstitial atoms and dislocation generation/annihilation in transient creep and recovery of the helical springs under small forces. For the creep deformation, the stress exponent and activation energy for the plastic flow of the nonlinear dashpot are 2 and 57.8 kJ/mol, respectively, and the activation energy for the deformation flow of the linear dashpot is 41.8 kJ/mol. The nonlinear dashpot does not play any role in the recovery deformation, and the formation energy of defects for the recovery deformation of the helical springs is 51.4 kJ/mol. The approach used in this work provides a simple method to use a phenomenological model with a nonlinear dashpot to capture the power-law creep deformation of metallic materials.