Saturation of a plate with an environmental impurity under mechanical loading conditions

We analyze a model of saturation of a thin plate with an alloying element under uniform loading with a distributed constant load. The appearance of internal stresses accompanying the diffusion processes is taken into account as well as the effect of the stresses on the mass transfer. The exact solution of the mechanical equilibrium problem has allowed us to reduce the model to a nonlinear diffusion problem with a convective term responsible for mass transfer under the action of stresses. We have found that the external loading significantly affects the process if the magnitude of the distributed load is greater than that of the internal stresses, which, in turn, depends on the material properties and the diffusant type. The time-dependence curves of the average strains in the direction of the acting load are typical of the phenomena of diffusion creep.