STABILITY OF GAMMA'(1) MARTENSITE IN CU-BASE ALLOYS

The analysis of the nonequilibrium sigma - T diagrams constructed from the results of tension/compression thermomechanical tests with [001] Cu-based shape memory alloy/SMA/single crystals was found to be a good way how to understand complex path dependent phenomena exhibited by S MA single crystals. Particularly, it has been shown that the gamma(1)' martensite phase forming in Cu-based SMA may exist in much wider rang e of stress-temperature conditions than would be expected just from th e results of thermal cycles or tensile loading-unloading tests with si ngle crystals usually presented in the literature.