Most creep studies are conducted to determine steady state creep rate and time to failure. However, the priority for the designer is to predict the amount of total creep, being the sum of primary and secondary creep elongations, for a given service life under given loads and temperatures, for example 0.5% elongation after 3000h. An assessment of total creep behavior of industrially important zinc alloys has been conducted, and correlation/prediction curves produced. Another important property, related to creep, is stability after ageing, both for unloaded and also loaded castings. Recently developed relationships between natural and artificial ageing, and the correlation of mechanical property changes for different periods of artificial ageing with natural ageing will be presented.
