On smeared and micromechanical approaches to modeling martensitic transformations in SMA

This paper explores a link between a recently proposed macroscopic “smeared” approach and a microscopic/mesoscopic approach of sequential laminate type to model martensitic transformations. In addition, a numerical simulation of the stress-induced martensitic transformation in a single crystal has been performed upon simplification to small deformations. One significant observation in the results of such a simulation is the counter-intuitive change of preferred martensitic plate even under proportional loading conditions. It remains to be seen if it is an artifact of the procedure adopted or the actual shift of active martensitic plate system. A further step toward modeling polycrystal behavior using homogenization with simple bounds has been attempted. Hysteresis results show that there is no clear demarcation of critical stress at which the transformation occurs. This may be critical to the functional fatigue behavior of shape memory materials.