“…It sho uld be noted th at Sj is also referred to as an internal state variabl e in the plasticity literature. A more genera l fo rmul ati on ca n expres the ten orial creep rate, E mn , in term of a tensori al stress state, (Jllln ' The role of micro tructure in influencing creep behavior has been studied extensively in a large number of materi als as evidenced by the numerous review arti cles (Schoeck , 1957 ;Sherby, L 962;M cLean, 1966;Sherby and Burke, 1967;Lag neborg, 1972;Weertman , 1975 ;Takeuch i and Argon , 1976;Blum, 1977;Nix and I1schner, ] 980; M ys hl yaev , 198 1; Bendersky et a !., 1985; Nix and Gibe ling, I 985(a); Cadek, 1986: Ca ill ard andB lum et a!. , 199 1;Longquan and N orthwood , 1993 ;Yoshin aga, 1993;Raj , 1994) and text (Garofalo, J965 ;Gittu , 1975 ;Poirier, 1985) which have followed the course of development of the subject over the last four decades.…”