The effect of austenitic grain size on the number of martensite orientation variants in stainless shape memory alloys

Abstract

The shape memory effect of stainless shape memory alloy is associated to non-thermolastic γ (CFC) ↔ ε (HCP) martensitic transformation. Recent results generated by our group have demonstrated that the parent austentie grain size is an important parameter for the degree of shape recovery and also in some others properties such as yield stress, hardness and volume fraction of thermal martensite. Using EBSD, this work shows that besides the above-mentioned parameters, the number of martensite orientation variants decreases when the grain size decreases.

Keywords