Effect of heat treatment on the transformation behavior and temperature memory effect in TiNiCu wires

The effect of heat treatment on the phase transformation behavior of TiNiCu shape memory alloy wires and the temperature memory effect in this alloy were investigated by the resistance method. These results showed that with increasing annealing temperature and annealing time, the phase transformation temperatures of TiNiCu wires were shifted to higher temperatures in the heating and cooling process. It was also found that incomplete thermal cycles, upon heating the TiNiCu wires, which were arrested at a temperature between the start and finish temperatures of the reverse martensite transformation, could induce a kinetic stop in the next complete thermal cycle. The kinetic stop temperature was closely related to the previous arrested temperature. This phenomenon was defined as the temperature memory effect. The result of this study was consistent with the previous report on the phenomenon obtained using the differential scanning calorimetry method, indicating that temperature memory effect was a common phenomenon in shape memory alloys.