CAREER: The Mechanics of Fracture in Superelastic Materials

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CAREER: The Mechanics of Fracture in Superelastic Materials ABSTRACTWendy C. Crone, Assistant ProfessorEngineering Mechanics Program, Department of Engineering PhysicsUniversity of Wisconsin - MadisonShape memory alloys (SMA) constitute a unique class of materials that havealready proven to have wide-ranging applications in the biomedical,aerospace, microelectronics, and automotive industries. These materialshave a crystallographic structure that can change reversibly andreproducibly, allowing the material to display dramatic stress-induced andtemperature-induced recoverable deformations. One key hurdle to their useis the development of reliable SMA materials and structures, in which thematerial's microstructure is well understood and its resistance to fatigueand fracture can be reliably predicted. Critical topics to be investigatedin this research involve: determining the effect of process-inducedmicrostructure on fracture and fatigue behavior; exploring the effect ofgrain refinement on the fracture behavior for grain sizes ranging betweenthe micron and nanometer scale; and developing experimentally-based modelsthat delineate the mechanisms influencing fracture and fatigue in NiTi andCu-based SMAs. In conjunction with this research, education initiativeswill be undertaken to develop widespread training at the undergraduate andgraduate levels in superelastic behavior and shape memory materials, vianew course material in the areas of nanomaterials, micromechanics andfracture mechanics. Not only will the expanded course material providestudents with an introduction to topics where mechanics has been developinginfluence and making critical contributions to new technologies, it willalso have international impact via Smart Materials Exemplar of theWorldwide Universities Network, an international network ofresearchers/educators.