Recovery stress formation in a restrained Fe–Mn–Si-based shape memory alloy used for prestressing or mechanical joining

• We conducted uniaxial tensile tests on an Fe-based shape memory alloy.
• We investigated the recovery stress under different restraining conditions.
• A substantial recovery stress develops even under non-ideal restraining conditions.
• We further interpreted the test data using techniques from constitutive modelling.

The formation of recovery stresses in a restrained Fe–Mn–Si–Cr–Ni–VC shape memory alloy used for mechanical coupling and prestressing has been investigated with special emphasis on non-ideal restraints that might reduce the recovery stress. The evolution of recovery stresses in the presence of different initial gaps and elastic restraints was investigated experimentally. The results show that the alloy can still produce substantial recovery stresses even under non-ideal restraining conditions. In a second part, the experimental results are analyzed using techniques from constitutive modelling to investigate the evolution of the recovery stress in a more rigorous way. For this purpose the measured strain is decomposed into its elastic, thermal expansion, and transformation parts. With these strain components, the development of the recovery stress during heating and cooling can be described for all different constraint conditions in a unified way. The analysis also shows why optimizing a material for high recovery stress is different from optimizing it for a large recovery strain.