Thermomechanical behavior of shape memory alloy under complex loading conditions

The thermo-mechanical behavior of polycrystalline shape memory alloy (SMA) under multi-axial loading with varying temperature conditions has been studied by experiments. Recently the research has been extended theoretically and a mechanical model of polycrystalline SMA and the corresponding mesoscopic constitutive equations have been developed. The model presented in this paper is constructed on the basis of the crystal plasticity and the deformation mechanism of SMA. The variants in the crystal grains and the orientations of crystal grains in the polycrystal are considered in the proposed model; the constitutive equations are derived on the basis of the proposed model. The volume fraction of the martensite variants in the transformation process and the influence of the stress state on the transformation process are also considered. Some calculated results obtained by the constitutive equations are presented and compared with the experimental results. It is found that the deformation behavior of SMA under complex loading conditions can be well reproduced by the calculation of the constitutive equations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.