Low cycle fatigue and creep of polymer composites at high temperatures (remaining life of pipes for heat water supply and so) is of great interest for specialists in mechanics.

• Creep Enhanced Ferritic Steels, Austenitic Steels, Nickel-base alloys, as well as other metallic materials and their welds in diverse technical applications • Testing & Measurement including Miniaturized testing • Materials properties modelling • Effect of chemistry and process route on material behavior and damage mechanisms • Microstructural stability & evolution • Fatigue and Creep-Fatigue Interaction • Failure analysis • Interaction of Environments on creep behaviors

how creep and fatigue data can be used to investigate quantitatively the quality of interface as well as the interracial contribution to the strenght and stress relaxation of a composite…

Dear Paul Olaru I certainly hope there will be papers on all of these topics at the conference. Nevertheless, do you have any particular suggestion for an in depth discussion during a Workshop Session?

For example if Creep Strength Enhanced Ferritic steels are of particular importance then would a discussion of "creep-intolerant" materials (as used in ASME Code Case B31 CASE 183 - 5) be of interest?

Yes, regarding :Effect of chemistry and process route on material behavior and damage mechanisms, fatigue, brittle.

Regarding my above-subject, I realized some technological-works for my PhD candidates -2026.Thanks.

Hi Mike, here are my replies to encourage this discussion:

1. The so-called "creep-intolerant materials" issue would be a good Workshop topic. Might "competition-intolerant materials developers" be a better way to characterise this question? It is one thing to point out what issues might arise with a material your competitor wants to sell. It is quite another thing to seek to place some sort of quasi-technical, quasi-legalistic ban on the sale of your competitor's material!

2. The vexed question of design for a 60-year life could usefully be linked to a discussion of stable versus unstable creep modelling. One view is that for long-term data extrapolation, we need "stable" "robust" (often quasi-linear) models which are insensitive to variations in the longer term data, and can hence (or so it is claimed) be extrapolated far into the future. The opposite view is that we need models which recognise that all materials are unstable, and progressively degrade at longer times and higher temperatures. If we do not look for such degradation and incoroporate it in our models, we will produce over-optimistic designs which fail to achieve the design life.

3. Better QA records etc on new plant manufacture would be a fine thing. I have seen pipework installers obliged to supply careful spooling diagrams identifying precisely what heat has gone where, only to find that the purchaser then just bins the data, thus making life a lot harder for their own maintenance activities. Perhaps an ECCC Conference is not the best place to discuss this particular topic?

Cheers - David

Hi David Allen

Thank you for your comments and I very much agree with them. A good Workshop discussion can be a stimulating and inspiring event at a conference, a poor Workshop discussion can be boring and tedious. Whichever we choose we will need, some short, prepared discussion points from different points of view to stimulate a vibrant and good-natured debate. The Workshop will need a good and well-prepared Chair (I'm not putting myself forward for that).

But I think the question still looks to need more answers. Perhaps 1. is the current front runner. What do you think? But perhaps we should avoid contractual matters and keep to technical content.

ECCC 2026 Training Day Programme, 17th May 2026

Hôtel Aquabella, Aix-en-Provence, France

(Programme subject to update / revision)

09:00 Registration

09:15 Start and Welcome 1. Introduction to materials and process routes for manufacture of components operating at high temperature in power plants and gas turbines.

• Principal alloy families, specifications, product forms, manufacturing.

2. Creep design and creep property requirements • Relationship with other properties (tensile strength, fatigue etc) • Creep in relation to tubing/piping (+ weldments), rotating equipment (blades, rotors, casings [bolts]…) • Manufacturing aspects: properties of different product forms, why they differ

10:30 Coffee

3. Do creep tests represent the behaviour of a material in service? Why may they not?

• How do we develop / introduce new materials?

• Long-term testing programmes, sources of data.

• What can I get from a creep test? Creep strain-time models/methods. Sources of uncertainty.

12:00 - 12:45 Lunch

4. The requirement of stable creep models for 30yr / 60yr plant lifetimes

• Determination of strength (design), lifetime (life assessment) from creep data

• Can we really predict the future using empirical models?

• Are physically-based models any better?

• The ECCC approach with Post Assessment Tests.

14:30 Coffee

5. Future development of design data for national/international standards

• Why “negligible creep” is important, and how to determine it.

• Should we be designing to eg. time to 1% creep / onset of tertiary rather than rupture life

• Creep-fatigue, its origin and treatment

• How to assess plant lifetimes limited by creep - life assessment principles/uncertainties.

6. (If time) an overview of the ECCC 2026 conference programme

16:00 Close