THERMOMECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR OF THIN NiTi WIRES FOR APPLICATION IN SMART TEXTILES

Currently considered applications of NiTi wires in production of smart textiles require to use very long (tens of km) thin wires (d=̃50|am). Textile applications also impose specific requirements on mechanical and functional properties of the wires. Compared to the bulk NiTi, the thin wires have same chemical compositions but finer microstructure and stronger texture due to different cold work/heat treatments employed. Consequently they exhibit somehow different thermomechanical properties (e.g. higher yield stress for plasticity and tensile strength, wider superelastic window, better long term cyclic stability in case of superelastic wires). In this work, an approach adopted towards thermomechanical testing of thin NiTi wires for textile applications (20<100 μm) is presented and selected experimental results on superelastic as well as memory wires are reported and discussed. © 2008 ASM.

ISBN:978-0-87170-862-5

Publication year:2008