NITINOL ALLOY FOR WITH GOOD MECHANICAL STABILITY AND A GOOD SUPERELASTIC OPERATING WINDOW

摘要

A nickel-titanium alloy having a large, superelastic operating temperature window or range. The nickel-titanium alloy includes at least an additional element such as platinum, palladium, manganese, boron aluminum, tungsten, and/or zirconium. When processed through heat treat and area reduction steps, the resultant alloy exhibits a wide superelastic temperature operating window if the characteristics of the alloy when plotted on a temperature versus stress curve can be expresses as UP=(0.66ksi/°C)(T)+sSUB0 , /SUBwith RSUP2/SUP =0.98, wherein sSUB0 /SUBis the upper plateau stress of the alloy at about 0°C, RSUP2 /SUPis the coefficient of determination, and UP is the upper plateau stress of the alloy.