Revealing the microstructure evolution of the deformed superelastic NiTi wire by EBSD

The generation of irreversible macroscopic strains in superelastic NiTi alloys is an important issue closely related to the crystallography of the transformation from B2 austenite to B19’ martensite under stress. Although widely investigated at micro and nano scales by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the observation of this phase transformation at the mesoscale is still lacking. In the present study, a superelastic NiTi wire was maintained in bending condition and investigated by electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) technique. A strong variant selection and a formation of martensite texture were observed and quantified using the interaction work (IW) based on the distortion matrix of a single variant. A new habit plane between martensite and parent B2, {114}B2 || (201¯)M, was experimentally measured. It was explained by the Phenomenological Theory of Martensite Crystallography (PTMC) using dislocation slip {110}<001>B2 as lattice invariant shear (LIS). Some new B2 domains were also found in {114}B2 twinning relation with primary B2 grain. Two scenarios are proposed to explain them: a) the direct formation of {114}B2 deformation twin in B2, and b) a more complex one in which a primary B2 grain is transformed into a martensite variant, a (201¯)M deformation twin is formed inside this variant; then the (201¯)M twinned martensite reversely transforms into a new {114}B2 twinned B2 domain. The scenario b) permits to explain some uncommon (130)M, (201)M, and (101¯)M twins observed by EBSD between the martensite variants of the two {114}B2 twin-related B2 phases.