Thermal investigation of fabricating porous NiTi SMA by SHS

In this paper, the porous NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) fabricated by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) has been investigated experimentally and numerically. The mathematical models about the ignition and the sintering were constructed to investigate the effect of the preheating temperature and the coil temperature on the combustion. The results showed that the temperature difference between the ignition face and the bottom face was large due to low heat transfer conductivity. The ignition time would increase with the decrease of the coil temperature and the preheating temperature. The temperatures for different locations showed a strong dependence on the combustion time for lower preheating temperature, for the preheating temperature 1173 K, this mode of the combustion has transferred from SHS to thermal explosion. The transient partial molten phenomenon occurred during the process of combustion, which was more homogenous for preheating temperature 873 K. The mean velocity of the combustion wave was investigated systematically. An experiment was also carried out to investigate the ignition and SHS reaction for porous NiTi alloy in this paper. It was found that the results of experiment and numerical simulation were shown in good consistence.