Modeling and Numerical Simulation of Thermo-Mechanical Behavior of Shape Memory Alloys

The objective of this work is to present a law permitting a description of all the specific shape memory alloys behaviors. The development of an application requires a design tool adapted to the specificities of these alloys. This model should be used by developers who are not necessarily specialists in shape memory materials, it is imperative that the material parameters are as explicit as possible. Their identification must be achieved by limiting itself to simple tests to implement. The first part of this work is devoted to the presentation of the thermodynamic model of SMA behavior. In the framework of thermodynamics of irreversible processes, the steps of the definition of this model are presented, the variables description representing the evolution of the material to the constitutive equations and implementation in a finite element code. The objective of the second part is to present, through a numerical study and comparison of the results provided by the simulation and experimental database, the predictive ability of the model. In general, many behaviors of specific thermomechanical loading paths are modelized and experimental basis is used to validate the method of identification of material parameters and compare the results with those from the model of the database.