Meso-scopically homogeneous superelastic transformation and related elastocaloric effect in a textured Ti-based shape memory alloy

Abstract

Homogeneous superelastic behavior in shape memory alloys (SMAs) has been confirmed to be crucial for functional and structural fatigue properties, and more importantly, for stable elastocaloric effect (eCE). Here, the Ti–22Nb–4Zr–2Ta plate was prepared by successive cold rolling at 98.5%, followed by annealing at 1023 K for 30 min, forming a strong recrystallized texture, denoted as {112}β < 110>β. Such favorable texture contributed to a completely recoverable superelastic strain of ∼2.4% with narrow hysteresis of 35/45 MPa under isothermal/quasi-adiabatic conditions, which resulted in homogeneous martensitic transformation (MT) and adiabatic temperature changes (ΔTadi) of 4.8 K upon loading and 4.4 K upon unloading. The observation on the evolution of space-resolved strain and temperature throughout the sample revealed that the intrinsic feature of diffuse transformation along with favorable texture contributed to meso-scopically homogeneous transformation and related eCE. A standard deviation of strain was determined to be only 0.05%, corresponding to a small temperature deviation of 0.2–0.3 K, which quantitatively demonstrated the homogeneity, potentially high solid-state cooling performance efficiency, and long structural and functional fatigue life in Ti-based SMAs.