Regular Article

Origin of stabilization of macrotwin boundaries in martensites^★

¹ Laboratoire d’Etude des Microstructures, ONERA, CNRS, BP 72, 92322 Châtillon, France
² CNRS, LSPM UPR3407, Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
³ M Arvutiteaduse instituut Tartu Ülikool J.Liivi 2, 50409 Tartu, Estonia

^a e-mail: umut.salman@lspm.cnrs.fr

Received: 28 September 2018
Received in final form: 2 December 2018
Published online: 23 January 2019

Abstract

The origin of stabilization of complex microstructures along macrotwin boundaries in martensites is explained by comparing two models based on Ginzburg-Landau theory. The first model incorporates a geometrically nonlinear strain tensor to ensure that the Landau energy is invariant under rigid body rotations, while the second model uses a linearized strain tensor under the assumption that deformations and rotations are small. We show that the approximation in the second model does not always hold for martensites and that the experimental observations along macrotwin boundaries can only be reproduced by the geometrically nonlinear (exact) theory.