Tension-compression asymmetric functional degeneration of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy: Experimental observation and multiscale constitutive model

The functional degeneration of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) rods is investigated in the cyclic tension-unloading and compression-unloading experiments. The results show that the functional degeneration exhibits a strong tension–compression asymmetry, which originates from the initial 〈1 1 1〉 and 〈1 1 0〉 mixed textures along the axial direction of the rods, the polarity of martensite transformation, and the complex interaction between martensite transformation and dislocation slipping. Moreover, the dependence of functional degeneration on the applied stress level is discussed. To understand and predict the effect of initial texture on the cyclic deformation of polycrystalline NiTi SMA, a multiscale constitutive model is constructed at finite deformation. At the mesoscopic scale, two major inelastic deformation mechanisms, i.e., the transformation between austenite and martensite phases and the transformation-induced plasticity caused by the strain mismatch at the austenite–martensite interface, are considered. The total deformation gradient is multiplicatively decomposed into the martensite transformation, transformation-induced plasticity and elastic parts. The deformation gradient parts at the mesoscopic scale are obtained by upscaling these physical quantities at a smaller spatial scale (i.e., the microscopic scale). The proposed model is formulated within the framework of irreversible thermodynamics. The driving forces for martensite transformation and transformation-induced plasticity are derived according to the established Helmholtz free energy and Clausius-Duhem inequality. The complex interaction between martensite transformation and dislocation slipping, and the forward/reverse inheritance of dislocations caused by the moving austenite–martensite interfaces are considered. To calculate the overall cyclic responses of polycrystalline NiTi SMA at the macroscopic scale, the developed constitutive model is implemented into the finite element software ABAQUS/Explicit using a user-defined material subroutine. A polycrystalline representative volume element is constructed by introducing the initial 〈1 1 1〉 and 〈1 1 0〉 mixed textures observed in the experiment. By comparing the simulated results with the experimental data, the capability of the proposed model to predict the texture-induced tension–compression asymmetric functional degeneration is verified, and the influence of texture type on the cyclic deformation is discussed.