Temperature Variation in NiTi Shape Memory Alloy During Cyclic Phase Transition

Superelastic NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) has high recoverable strain and outstanding damping capacity, and has been used as a damping material for many applications. When subjected to displacementcontrolled cyclic deformation, the material exhibits distinctive temperature and stress oscillations due to the release of latent heat and hysteresis heat and the heat transfer with the ambient. In this paper, we establish a model to predict the temperature variation of NiTi SMA wire specimen under the cyclic phase transition by lumped heat transfer analysis. Closed-form solution on the evolution of the temperature is obtained. It is shown that, for all the test frequencies, steady-state cyclic thermal response of the specimen can be reached after a certain number of loading cycles in a transient stage, exhibiting a kind of ‘‘thermal shake down.’’ In the steady state, the temperature profile oscillates around a mean temperature plateau. We show that the temperature oscillation is mainly due to the release/absorption of latent heat during cyclic phase transition, while the mean temperature rise of the specimen is caused by the accumulation of the hysteretic heat of the phase transition. The model predictions agree well with the experimental results.