have occurred as a result of a stress-induced displacive transformation. It was also demonstrated that this can only occur in nanocrystalline material, and the atomistic and thermodynamic aspects of the transformation were briefly considered. Finally, it may be noted that this displacive transformation process represents a new deformation mode that can be activated when alternative deformation mechanisms such as slip of lattice dislocations have become exhausted and the applied shear stress exceeds the local yield stress of the nanocrystalline state for this specific process.
ExperimentalA carbon steel with a typical yield stress of 0.88 GPa containing approximately 0.8 wt. % C and 1.3 wt. % Mn with a well-defined pearlitic microstructure of alternating lamellae of bcc-Fe (ferrite) and Fe 3 C (cementite) in each grain was transformed into a fully nanocrystalline structure by High Pressure Torsion (HPT): disc-shaped samples with a diameter ranging from 10 ± 20 mm and a thickness of 0.2 ± 0.5 mm are placed between two anvils and subjected to 7 GPa pressure. The lower anvil is then rotated slowly (approx 1 rpm = 0.017 Hz) and frictional forces result in the shear straining of the sample as illustrated in Figure 1(a,b): this results in very high shear strains at relatively low strain rates. As our previous investigations showed, [16] the process of nanostructuring involves a sequence of stages such as the formation of cells and cell blocs, the increase of misorientations between cells, and finally formation of the nanostructure in the form of statistically oriented mosaic-nanocrystals. The microstructure of the specimens was characterised by transmission electron microscopy using both conventional bright-field and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) imaging together with selected area diffraction using a FEI Tecnai F20 ST operated at 200 kV and an extraction voltage of 4.1 keV for the field emission gun (at FZ Karlsruhe) together with selected area diffraction using a FEI Tecnai T20 ST operated at 200 kV equipped with a Gatan Imaging Filter (at the University of Glasgow). The crystallography of crystallites and the interfaces between them was determined from fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) of different areas of the HRTEM images using the software package Digital Micrograph (Gatan Inc.).In the present study we present applied and basic work on composites which combine shape memory alloys and polymeric materials. This type of composites has received increasing attention in the last decade. The scientific literature data COMMUNICATIONS