Calorimetric study of the influence of thermal cycling on the martensitic transformation of Cu-Zn-Al alloys

Abstract

A calorimetric study of the effect of thermal cycling on the martensitic transformation of Cu-Zn-Al shape-memory alloys is presented. The transformation kinetics become smoother when the number of cycles increases, and start progressively at higher temperatures and finish at lower ones. The use of a high-sensitivity calorimeter has, for the first time, enabled the study of the evolution of the elastic and frictional energies involved in the thermoelastic balance. It is shown that dislocations created in thermal cycling do not result in an indefinite increase of such contributions.