A Measurement of Volume Resistivity in Fe-Based Shape Memory Alloy under Tensile Deformation and its Evaluation of Strain Rate Sensitivity

Abstract

Fe-based shape memory alloy (Fe-SMA) shows the smaller shape memory effect (SME) compared with the widely-used NiTi alloy. However, because its production cost is much lower than the NiTi alloy, Fe-SMA is challenged to be applied in civil engineering fields such as vibration absorbers and joints. A key of the SME is stress-induced martensitic transformation. Thus, it is important to evaluate an amount of martensite, which can control such excellent performance of Fe-SMA, for increasing a reliability of the Fe-SMA. However, until now, it is quite hard to find studies to evaluate the amount of martensite in Fe-SMA experimentally during deformation at various strain rates, especially during high speed deformation. Instead of the evaluation, it is convenient to capture change in volume resistivity, which has a correlation with the amount of martensite, at various strain rates. In the past, the volume fraction of α’ martensite is evaluated by using a resistance measurement based on the four point-probes method. The advantages of the method are quite simple and relatively high precision, however, its disadvantages are a requirement of strictly-precise reference resistor and power supply, and it is easily affected from noise. In this study, at first, a circuit of Kelvin double bridge with a higher precision is assembled. Then, the rate sensitivity of volume resistivity in Fe-28Mn-6Si-5Cr alloy, which is a kind of Fe-SMA, is experimentally estimated by using the assembled circuit of Kelvin double bridge during tensile testing at various strain rates.