Micromechanical modelling of shape memory alloy composites

An isothermal finite element method (FEM) mode has been applied to study the behavior of two kinds of shape memory alloy (SMA) composites. For SMA-fiber reinforced normal metal composites, the FEM analysis shows that the mechanical behavior of the composites depends on the SMA volume fraction. For normal metal-fiber reinforced SMA matrix composites, the SMA phase transformation is affected by the increasing Young's modulus of the metal fiber. The phase transfromation was also treated using a simple numerical analysis, which assumes that there are uniform stresses and strains distributions in the fiber and the matrix respectively. It is found that there is an obvious difference between the FEM analysis and the simple numerical assessment. Only FEM can provide reasonable predictions of phase transformations in SMA/normal metal composites.