Comportamento termomecânico de minimolas superelásticas de NiTi: Influência de tratamentos térmicos.

Abstract

Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are an important group of metallic active materials that respond to thermomechanical stimuli through the Shape Memory Effect (SME) or the Superelasticity (SE) phenomena. Both these effects are capable of retrieving large amounts of strain by simple heating, in the former case, or simple mechanical unload, in the latest case. The SMA of the NiTi family composition exhibit superior properties when compared to other compositions, including biocompability, what brings this alloy to be widely used in medical and orthodontic fields in the form of tools and accessories to specific treatments. As an example, mini coil springs of NiTi SMA presenting superelasticity reach strain levels hundreds of times higher than one-dimensional elements, such as wires. However, a more suitable technique to manipulate mechanical properties of metallic finished products is the use of heat treatments like annealing. Mainly after experiencing cold working processes, annealing treatments are capable of partially or totally recover the atomic mobility, witch directly affects thermomechanical response of SMA. In this context, this dissertation work aims to study the influence of annealing heat treatments over thermomechanical behavior of SMA NiTi mini coil springs originally presenting the SE. A factorial design was used to evaluate the influence of temperature and time of annealing over some of the main thermomechanical springs’ properties: spring constant (stiffness), shear modulus, energy dissipation capacity, phase transformation temperatures, thermal hysteresis and transformation enthalpy availability. It was demonstrated that heat treatments between 500°C and 600°C are capable of converting the superelastic state of the mini coil springs to an actuator state, as a result of the shape memory effect appearance.