Estudo experimental do comportamento térmico e dinâmico de fios de liga com memória de forma NiTi em regime superelástico.

Abstract

Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) owe their behavior unique to a reversible phase transformation between two crystalline structures: martensite (low temperature and stiffness) and austenite (high temperature and stiffness). This phase change can occur as a result of two distinct stimuli: a change in temperature or an applied mechanical stress, both over certain critical values, characteristic of this materials. From the latter it results the phenomenon of the superelasticity, which is the ability to totally recover a deformation after simply ceasing the load. During this deformation occurs a stressinduced martensitic transformation from austenite to martensite, being it an exothermal process and that tends to stabilize after a certain number of cycles. Investigation concerning dynamic properties of SMA demonstrate that its superelastic behavior depends on the strain rate, or in other words, on the excitation frequency. This behavior results from the complex combination of mechanical stress, temperature and rate of latent heat dissipation generated in the material. It was also observed that high frequencies diminish the capacity of dissipation of latent heat, resulting in an increase in the material temperature and, therefore, in higher values of phase transformation stresses. This kind of consideration is fundamental in dynamic behavior modeling, applicable for instance, in vibration absorption systems in civil building. In this context, the objective of this work is experimentally study the influence of the frequency on superelastic behavior of pre-stabilized Ni-Ti SMA superelastic wires, as well as the effects of heat generation on the evaluated mechanical properties. Dynamical tests were performed in a uniaxial tensile mode in Ni-Ti SMA superelastic wires varying the frequency and simultaneously monitoring sample’s temperature, using a test machine from MTS, model MTS 793 series.