The most important disadvantage of Cu-Al-Ni shape memory alloys concerns their high brittleness. Previous works have allowed us to show that powder metallurgy is an excellent way to improve the thermomechanical behavior of these alloys. However, the powder metallurgy processing method still shows some drawbacks, which can be overcome if powders are mechanically milled before compacting. In this work we present the study of the martensitic transformation of the alloy in the different stages of the elaboration process in order to evidence the way to elaborate a final alloy with the desired transformation temperatures starting from a mixture of available powders of different compositions.

Peer reviewed