Phase transition, twinning, and spall damage of NiTi shape memory alloys under shock loading

Shape memory alloys are emerging functional materials in various fields due to their unique mechanical properties. In this work, plate-impact experiments have been performed to study the dynamic behavior of near-equiatomic NiTi shape memory alloys with different initial phases, i.e., the single austenite (B2) and the mixed phase of austenite and martensite (B19′). A Doppler pin system and soft-recovery cylinder are employed to in-situ probe the macroscopic response and catch the shocked sample for postmortem characterizations, respectively. The observed bilinear behavior of the Hugoniot data, combined with the X-ray diffraction analysis of recovered samples, suggests that the B2 austenite undergoes a martensitic transformation at ∼5 GPa. Such a phase transition affects not only the spall damage but also the deformation mechanism of NiTi alloys. Specifically, it is identified that, in association with the B2 to B19’ transformation, the spall strength is reduced by ∼7% and the austenite twinning disappears in the recovered NiTi sample. These results thus indicate that the deformation and fracture behaviors of NiTi shape memory alloys under shock compression are strongly coupled with the martensitic transformation.