The effect of crystallographic texture on stress-induced martensitic transformation in NiTi: A computational analysis

NiTi׳s superelasticity is exploited in a number of biomedical devices, in particular self-expanding endovascular stents. These stents are often laser-cut from textured micro-tubing; texture is the distribution of crystallographic grain orientations in a polycrystalline material which has been experimentally shown to have a marked influence on mechanical properties. This study offers a computational examination into the effect of texture on the stress-induced martensite transformation (SIMT) in a micro-dogbone NiTi specimen subject to tensile loading. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is employed to simulate the transformational behaviour of the specimen on a micro-scale level. To represent a realistic grain structure in the FEA model, grains present in a 200µm×290µm test site located at the centre edge of the specimen were identified using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Grains are assumed to have homogenous behaviour with properties varying according to their crystallographic orientation to the loading direction. Required material properties were extracted from uniaxial stress-strain curves of single crystals for each crystallographic orientation for input into the in-built UMAT/Nitinol. The orientation of each grain in the test site was identified using Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) techniques. In this way, a quantitative explanation is offered to the effect of crystallographic texture on SIMT. Finally, the evolution of grains in the specimen, during the transformation process, was experimentally investigated by means of an in-situ SEM tensile test.