Tension induced detwinning of hierarchically twinned non-modulated martensite in Ni-Mn-Ga alloys

Abstract

Detwinning of martensite accounts for the macroscopic deformation in shape memory alloys, yet the corresponding microstructural and crystallographic evolution remains less understood. Here, the detwinning behaviors of hierarchically twinned non-modulated (NM) martensite in a directionally solidified Ni54Mn24Ga22 alloy under uniaxial tension along the <001>A direction of austenite are systematically investigated. Based on the interrupted in-situ EBSD measurements, it is demonstrated that tensile loading leads to the thickening of favorable variants with the <001>NM parallel to the loading direction through intensive detwinning, which follows the route of detwinning of internal nanotwins as well as collective detwinning of internal nanotwins and inter-plate major-major variant pairs. Besides, the internal detwinning is also coupled with the rigid body rotation owing to the constraints of inter-plate boundaries, resulting in the refinements in the inter-plate correlation as the variation of thickness ratio of nanotwins. Consequently, the hierarchically twinned microstructure finally evolves into a single-variant state with the <001>NM along the loading direction. This work provides clear demonstrations on the detwinning behaviors of hierarchically twinned NM martensite induced by tensile loading, which allows us to gain deep crystallographic insights into the stress-induced rearrangement of martensite variants in association with the macroscopic deformation.