Recent advances in spatiotemporal evolution of thermomechanical fields during the solid–solid phase transition

This article reports recent advances in the micromechanics experimental research of the solid–solid phase transition in NiTi shape memory alloys. In the first part, we show how an initially macroscopic homogeneous material state becomes unstable and transforms into a new phase under external driving, leading to the emergence of macroscopic spatial periodic self-organized domain patterns and their loading rate dependence. In the second part, we report the phenomenon of temperature and stress oscillations under cyclic phase transition. We elucidate the multi-physical and multi-scaled nature of the spatiotemporal evolution of thermomechanical fields and emphasize and examine the important role of time scales and thermomechanical coupling in the response of the material.