The effect of martensite plasticity on the cyclic deformation of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy

Based on stress-controlled cyclic tension–unloading experiments with different peak stresses, the effect of martensite plasticity on the cyclic deformation of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy micro-tubes is investigated and discussed. The experimental results show that the reverse transformation from the induced martensite phase to the austenite phase is gradually restricted by the plastic deformation of the induced martensite phase caused by an applied peak stress that is sufficiently high (higher than 900 MPa), and the extent of such restriction increases with further increasing the peak stress. The residual and peak strains of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy accumulate progressively, i.e., transformation ratchetting occurs during the cyclic tension–unloading with peak stresses from 600 to 900 MPa, and the transformation ratchetting strain increases with the increase of the peak stress. When the peak stress is higher than 900 MPa, the peak strain becomes almost unchanged, but the residual strain accumulates and the dissipation energy per cycle decreases very quickly with the increasing number of cycles due to the restricted reverse transformation by the martensite plasticity. Furthermore, a quantitative relationship between the applied stress and the stabilized residual strain is obtained to reasonably predict the evolution of the peak strain and the residual strain.