In Situ Neutron Diffraction Studies of Large Monotonic Deformations of Superelastic Nitinol

Superelastic Nitinol micromechanics are studied well into plastic deformation regimes using neutron diffraction. Insights are made into the nature of initial transformation, bulk transformation, plastic deformation, and unloading. Schmid factor predictions based on habit plane variants are found to best describe the very first grains that transform, prior to the transformation plateaus. However, the bulk transformation behavior that gives rise to transformation plateaus violates single crystal Schmid factor analyses, indicating that in bulk polycrystals, it is the effect of grain neighborhoods, not the orientations of individual grains, that drives transformation behaviors. Beyond the plateaus, a sudden shift in micromechanical deformation mechanisms is observed at ~8.50 %/4.75 % tension/compression engineering strain. This mechanism results in reverse-phase transformation in both cases, indicating a strong relaxation in internal stresses of the samples. It is inferred that this mechanism is most likely initial bulk plastic flow, and postulated that it is the reason for a transition from fatigue life enhancement to detriment when pre-straining superelastic Nitinol. The data presented in this work provide critical datasets for development and verification of both phenomenological internal variable-driven and micromechanical theories of transformation-plasticity coupling in shape memory alloys.