THE' major part of the industrial uses of high creep-resistant alloys at elevated temperatures and fairly
high stresses has been due to the development of
the gas turbine and the jet-propulsion engines.
Although Howe1 as far back as 1885 made investigation
on the extension of metals as function of time , and
creep data were reported by Andrade2 in 1911, there
was very little technical interest in the phenomena
of creep or i n creep-resistant metals and alloys
until shortly after World War I, when better materials were required for aero-engine parts, for the petroleum
and chemical industries at fairly high temperatures
400°- 600°C.) and sometimes under severely corrosive
conditions, for parts of industrial furnaces at high temperatures and for steam turbines. The demand of mate-rials resistant to creep steadily increased during
World War II. But the greatest resistance to creep at
high temperatures and fairly high stresses have been
due to the development of gas turbine and jet-propul-
sion engines. An attempt has been made in this paper to indicate briefly some of the metallurgical factors involved in the development of high creep-resistant
alloy steels with particular reference to turbine materials
