S. Rajagopalan, A. Little, R. Vaidyanathan, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL; M. A. M. Bourke, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Instrumented indentation experiments, using a spherical diamond indenter, were conducted to study the elastic response of the monoclinic martensite phase in NiTi. Neutron diffraction spectra were obtained from the same alloy during mechanical loading at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The elastic moduli determined from the two techniques were in agreement with each other and above values obtained from conventional extensometer-based tests. The difference is attributed to limited twinning deformation which appears to be suppressed during spherical indentation and not directly influence the spacing of lattice planes, which is the basis of elastic analyses in the neutron diffraction technique. This work continues to establish a methodology to obtain mechanical properties of NiTi from intricate geometries (e.g., stents) and small volumes (e.g., centimeter-scaled button melts) by using instrumented indentation. This research is supported, in part, through a National Science Foundation CAREER award (DMR-0239512).