Variation of stress across the length and thickness of a cantilever during creep allows obtaining multiple pairs of strain rates and stress under steady-state condition. This work applies digital image correlation (DIC) and conjugate analytical models to obtain several such “strain rate–stress” pairs during steady-state creep by testing a single cantilever at a constant applied load. Furthermore, these strain rate–stress pairs are used to accurately determine the stress exponent of the material (e.g., Al and Pb). In addition, an empirical observation of plotting strain rate as a function of stress at fixed strain during primary creep for estimating stress exponent is extended to bending creep, wherein strain rates of the points in the cantilever lying on an iso-strain contour were plotted against the moment at the point to determine stress exponent. This study, thereby, proves that the “bending creep–DIC” combination is a high throughput test methodology for studying steady-state creep.

The stress and hence strain fields in a cantilever deforming as per power-law creep vary across the length and thickness of the sample, which allow obtaining multiple stress–strain pairs from a single test. Here, a high-throughput method is described to quantify the primary-cum-steady-state creep response of materials by testing a single cantilever sample in bending and mapping strain fields using digital image correlation. The method is based on the existence of stress invariant points in a cantilever, where the value of stress does not change during creep. It is demonstrated that strain evolution throughout primary and steady-state stages at these points is identical to the creep response obtained under uniaxial tests. Furthermore, the gained insights were exploited to obtain various parameters of a power-law type primary-cum-steady-state creep equation by testing only one cantilever sample. The developed method allows obtaining uniaxial creep curves at multiple stresses by testing a single cantilever, thereby reducing the time and number of samples required to understand the creep behavior of a material. The method has been validated by performing bending tests on Al and comparing the results with those of corresponding uniaxial tests.