Investigation on the Anisotropic Transformation Surfaces of Super-Elastic NiTi Shape Memory Alloys Under Multiaxial Cyclic Loading Conditions

The cyclic transformation behaviors of polycrystalline super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloys (SMAs) under multiaxial loading paths with different angles between axial and torsional loading orientations were experimentally investigated. The experimental results showed that the start stresses of forward and reverse transformations decreased with the increase in the number of cycles and exhibit obvious anisotropic evolutions. The start stresses of forward and reverse transformations in the tensile and torsional directions did not satisfy the von Mises criterion. The shape of transformation surface during the forward and reverse transformations evolved with the increase in the number of cycles. Then, new cyclic anisotropic transformation surfaces were established by introducing an anisotropic tensor into the von Mises equivalent stress based on a typical transformation criterion related to \(J_2 \) and \(J_3 \). Moreover, the evolution equations of material parameters used in the proposed transformation surfaces were established to describe the subsequent evolutions of transformation surfaces. Finally, the start stresses of forward and reverse transformations predicted using the proposed transformation surfaces were compared with the experimental results. It shows that the proposed transformation surfaces can reasonably describe the start stresses of forward and reverse transformations, which are helpful for establishing a three-dimensional cyclic constitutive model to describe the cyclic transformation behaviors of super-elastic NiTi SMAs.