Determination of single crystal thermal expansion in Uranium-6wt%Niobium shape memory alloy using in-situ diffraction and modeling of textured polycrystalline samples

In-situ neutron diffraction and ex-situ dilatometry experiments were performed on a chemically banded, quenched uranium-6wt% niobium shape memory alloy to study the impact of deformation-(detwinning-) induced texture on the evolution of thermally induced strains (and associated stresses). Thermal heating and cooling cycles between 5K and 473K were performed in-situ with neutron diffraction, and the lattice strain evolution is reported for the observed monoclinic α ″ phase. Comparisons between the measured diffraction strains and macroscopic dilatometry experiments reveal relationships between micro- and macro-level thermal expansion. Softening of the texture during heating suggests that twin boundary motion can accommodate the large internal thermal strains which are approximately 2% greater than that typically observed during the 175K heating interval used to age more randomly oriented polycrystalline material. Assuming weak constraint of neighboring grains in randomly textured polycrystals, the single crystal thermal expansion tensor is extracted from measurements of lattice strains over the range 5K to 473K. Predictions of polycrystalline thermal expansion, based upon this single crystal thermal expansion tensor, are shown to compare favorably with bulk thermal expansion observations of the as quenched microstructure. However, such a lower-bound estimate is insufficient to explain all aspects of the behavior of the textured material, where the matrix is not isotropic. It is hypothesized that relaxation processes which occur within the quenched microstructure during heating are responsible for the distinct thermal expansion behavior observed during the initial heating cycle compared to cooling and subsequent cycling.