Study on the thermo-mechanical behavior of superelastic NiTi wires

The strong coupling of thermal and mechanical properties and the highly inhomogeneous strain distribution in tensiontests motivate for thorough investigations on NiTi shape memory alloys. For these tests a complex experimental set-up has been developed which allows for the simultaneous measurement of stress, strain, and temperature with high spatial and temporal resolution. The experimental results show the influence of strain rate, number of cycles, and deformation level on the progress of stress induced phase transformation in the specimens. A critical evaluation of the experimental results in view of a potential constitutive modeling is given. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)