 Solution

Material creep is time-dependent permanent deformation under sustained stress. Its rate is often appreciable at a large homologous temperature $T/T_m$, because diffusion and obstacle-escape processes become rapid. In an activated regime a useful form iswith additional elastic, geometric and temperature prefactors absorbed into $A$ for the chosen approximation. The activation energy belongs to the rate-controlling process: bulk diffusion, grain-boundary diffusion and dislocation motion need not have the same value.

Boundary sliding can accommodate grain-shape changes during diffusional material creep; it is not a reason to identify either diffusion field as dislocation glide. The supplied map's A/B/C placement, including the boundary between B and C, determines these assignments. Its numerical contours apply to the material state used to construct that map, not to arbitrary grain sizes.