3. Main industrial alloys

3.1 Copper-based alloys

There are a number of copper-based alloys with shape memory properties: Cu-Zn, Cu-Al, Cu-Sn, Cu-Zn-Al, Cu-Al-Ni, Cu-Al-Mn, Cu-Al-Be. All these alloys have similar structures and behaviours, and in what follows we shall confine ourselves to a more detailed description of the Cu-Zn-Al, Cu-Al-Ni and Cu-Al-Be alloys, which are currently the main industrial alloys.

• High-temperature structure: phase $\beta$

  This is an intermetallic phase in which, regardless of their nature, the atoms are arranged in a cubic-centered structure. Depending on the alloys and their composition, different...