A. Isalgue et V. Torra, MS-EVOLUTION IN CU-ZN-AL SMA - PREDICTABLE TEMPERATURE AND TIME ACTIONS ON PARENT PHASE, Journal de physique. IV, 7(C5), 1997, pp. 339-344
Recently an increased interest has been noticed for order effects in C
u-based SMA. For instance, on the transformation temperature Ms values
and its evolution after heat treatments and quench type effects, Usua
lly, the experimental Ms values after quench fluctuate around +/- 2 K.
The interest for continuous actuators needs a more reduced and in any
case, predictable fluctuation domain. in this work, by using high res
olution in temperature, time and resistance measurements on a Cu-Zn-Al
alloy (1.48 e/a): the results establish a distribution of the evoluti
on in two main actions: a relatively short time and a long time tail e
ffects. Two temperature dependent time constants have been determined
from the experiments, with different activation energies(13630 K and 1
0330 K). The two actions might be associated to different ordering pro
cesses. Furthermore, the experimental results allow to describe a repr
esentative model that can be used to predict the Ms evolution with tem
perature and time. The differences between simulated and experimental
results for the Ms is about +/- 0.15 K for temperature-time evolutions
near room temperature.