Martensitic transformations in some ferrous and non-ferrous alloys under magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure

Martensitic transformations are extensively influenced by external fields, such as temperature and uniaxial stress, in transformation temperatures, crystallography and amount and morphology of the product martensites. Therefore, to clarify the effect of external fields on martensitic transformations it is very important to understand the essential problems of the transformation, such as thermodynamics, kinetics and the origin of the transformation, whose information is naturally useful in technological applications using the transformation. Magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure are important in such external fields because there exist some significant differences in magnetic moment and atomic volume between the parent and martensitic states. In the present paper, therefore, we summarize the effects of magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure on martensitic transformations in sonic ferrous and non-ferrous alloys by referring to past and recent works made by our group and many other researchers. The transformation start temperatures of all the ferrous alloys examined increase with increasing magnetic field, but those of non-ferrous alloys, such as Ti-Ni and Cu-Al-Ni shape memory alloys, are not affected. On the other hand, the transformation start temperature decreases with increasing hydrostatic pressure in some ferrous alloys, but increases in Cu-Al-Ni alloys. The magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure dependencies of the martensitic start temperature are in good agreement with those calculated by our proposed equations. During investigations of ferrous Fe-Ni-Co-Ti shape memory alloy, we found that a magnetoelastic martensitic transformation appears and, in addition, several martensite plates grow nearly parallel to the direction of the applied magnetic field in a specimen of Fe-Ni alloy single crystal. We further found that the isothermal process in Fe-Ni-Mn alloy changes to athermal under a magnetic field and the athermal process changes to isothermal under hydrostatic pressure. Based on these facts, a phenomenological theory has been constructed, which unifies the two transformation processes.