Diffusionless transformation

A diffusionless transformation is a phase change that occurs without the long-range diffusion of atoms but rather by some form of cooperative, homogeneous movement of many atoms that results in a change in crystal structure. These movements are small, usually less than the interatomic distances, and the atoms maintain their relative relationships. The ordered movement of large numbers of atoms lead some to refer to these as military transformations in contrast to civilian diffusion-based phase changes. A diffusionless transformation is a phase change that occurs without the long-range diffusion of atoms but rather by some form of cooperative, homogeneous movement of many atoms that results in a change in crystal structure. These movements are small, usually less than the interatomic distances, and the atoms maintain their relative relationships. The ordered movement of large numbers of atoms lead some to refer to these as military transformations in contrast to civilian diffusion-based phase changes. The most commonly encountered transformation of this type is the martensitic transformation which, while being probably the most studied, is only one subset of non-diffusional transformations. The martensitic transformation in steel represents the most economically significant example of this category of phase transformations but an increasing number of alternatives, such as shape memory alloys, are becoming more important as well. When a structural change occurs by the coordinated movement of atoms (or groups of atoms) relative to their neighbors then the change is termed displacive transformation. This covers a broad range of transformations and so further classifications have been developed . The first distinction can be drawn between transformations dominated by lattice-distortive strains and those where shuffles are of greater importance. Homogeneous lattice-distortive strains, also known as Bain strains, are strains that transform one Bravais lattice into a different one. This can be represented by a strain matrix S which transforms one vector, y, into a new vector, x: This is homogeneous as straight lines are transformed to new straight lines. Examples of such transformations include a cubic lattice increasing in size on all three axes (dilation) or shearing into a monoclinic structure.