Thermomechanical properties
Alliages à mémoire de forme

Consider a mother-phase single crystal cooled to below M_f: it transforms into all possible variants, as these are equiprobable. The associated shears compensate each other so that the macroscopic shape remains unchanged. If the sample is then subjected to mechanical stress (figure 4), it undergoes significant deformation ε _c, a large proportion of which ε_r remains after the stress ceases. This pseudoplastic deformation is essentially due to movements of the interfaces between the variants, so that the favored variants (those that give a deformation in the direction of the stress) grow at the expense...