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  1. The newly developed FeMnAlNiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) holds significant promise due to its desirable properties including ease of processing, room temperature superelasticity, a wide superelastic window of operation, and high transformation stress levels. In this study, we report single crystals with tensile axis near h123i exhibiting transformation strains of 9% with a high trans- formation stress of 700 MPa. The functional performance revealed excellent recovery of 98% of the applied strain in an incremental strain test for each of the 40 applied cycles. Concomitantly, the total residual strain increased after each cycle. Accumulation of residual martensite is observed possibly due to pinning of austenite/martensite (A/M) interface. Subsequently, under structural fatigue loading with a constant strain amplitude of 1%, the recoverable strains saturate around 1.15% in local residual martensite domains. Intermittent enhancement of recoverable strains is observed due to transformation triggered in previously untransformed domains. Eventually, fatigue failure occur- red after 2046 cycles and the dominant mechanism for failure was microcrack initiation and coalescence along the A/M interface. Thus, it is concluded that interfacial dislo- cations, which play a crucial role in the superelastic (SE) functionality, invariably affect the structural fatigue per- formance by acting as the weakest link in the microstructure. 
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  2. The factors that affect the fatigue performance of shape memory alloys (SMAs), including fatigue crack growth (FCG) response, is far from being well-understood. In this study, we point to a mechanism that degrades the FCG performance considerably. We introduce the notion of FCG being affected by shielding and deshielding mechanisms, the former enhancing the resistance while the latter reducing the mate- rials’ resistance. We show that the deshielding mechanism creates additional driving forces (positive K contribution) of both Mode II and Mode I types (as much as 5e10 MPa m1/2) which accelerates the crack advance. The origin of the positive K component is associated with the localized martensite variant formation that is highly asymmetric with respect to the crack tip. We derive a resultant DK in excellent agreement with that measured based on experimental displacement measurements. Overall, this study represents an advancement of our understanding in FCG of SMAs by quantifying the deshielding mechanism. 
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