Effect of temperature and texture on the reorientation of martensite variants in NiTi shape memory alloys

Martensitic Ni50Ti50 wires and sheets with different textures were tensile tested in the temperature range between −100 °C and 60 °C. The effect of texture and temperature on reorientation of martensite variants was investigated. After deformation, all material states were heated into the austenite regime to study their shape memory behavior. During room temperature tensile testing, in-situ digital image correlation revealed that the reorientation of martensite variants is associated with the nucleation and propagation of a macroscopic Lüders band. A comparison between the mechanical data obtained for wire and sheet specimens revealed a strong effect of texture. The plateau stresses of sheets were found to be 25–33% larger and their recoverable strains were 30% lower than for wires. However, the product of plateau stress and recoverable strain, which represents the external work per unit volume required for martensite variants reorientation does not depend on texture. The tensile tests performed at different temperatures revealed that in the temperature range considered the recoverable strain does not depend significantly on temperature. In contrast, the plateau stress as well as the external work required to reorient martensite decrease with increasing testing temperature. We use a thermodynamic approach involving the elastic strain energy associated with the growth of reoriented martensite variants to rationalize these temperature dependencies.