Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used worldwide for packing, and for this reason, it is the main material in plastic waste. The paper uses granules of recycled PET (R-PET) as raw material for producing filaments for 3D printing, subsequently used for printing the test specimens in different ways: longitudinally and at angles between 10° and 40° in this direction. Both the filaments and the printed specimens experience thermally driven shape memory effect (SME) since they have been able to recover their straight shape during heating, after being bent to a certain angle, at room temperature (RT). SME could be reproduced three times, in the case of printed specimens, and was investigated by cinematographic analysis. Then, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used, in R-PET granules, filaments and 3D printed specimens, to emphasize the existence of glass transition, which represents the governing mechanism of SME occurrence in thermoplastic polymers, as well as a recrystallization reaction. Subsequently, the paper investigated the 3D printed specimens by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) using a dual cantilever specimen holder. Temperature (DMA-TS) and isothermal scans (DMA-Izo) were performed, with the aim to discuss the variations of storage modulus and loss modulus with temperature and time, respectively.

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A fragment of a Cu-15Zn-6Al (mass%) shape memory alloy (SMA), in hot rolled-water quenched condition, was subjected to thermal cycling performed by means of a differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) device. Each cycle comprised controlled heating, isothermal maintaining, and free air-cooling, repeated three times, up to maximum temperatures increased by every 10 K, between 450 and 490 K, aiming to reproduce actual functioning conditions of a SM electrical actuator with uncontrolled cooling. Both the endothermic peaks, associated with thermally induced reversion of martensite to austenite, and their derivatives were analyzed in terms of critical transformation temperatures and specific enthalpy absorptions and in terms of transformation rates, respectively, with the aim of revealing their variational tendencies with increasing heating temperature to the maximum. The progressive decay of reverse martensitic transformation was associated with the reciprocal blocking of differentially oriented populations of stabilized lath-martensite needles, observed by scanning electron microscopy.

Fe-14 Mn-6 Si-9 Cr-5 Ni (mass. %) shape memory alloys (SMAs) were produced from raw powders employed both in initial commercial state and in a mixture state of equal fractions of commercial and mechanically alloyed (MA’d) particles. After blending, pressing and sintering, powder compacts were hot rolled (HR’d) and solution treated (ST’d) before being machined into plane-parallel lamellas. Specimens with special geometry were pre-strained on a tensile testing machine. By means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) the presence of ε hexagonal close packed and α’ body center cubic stress induced martensites was revealed and their thermally induced reversion to γ face center cubic austenite was evaluated by modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC). The results enabled the study of the influence of MA, HR, ST and pre-straining on phase structure and associated on shape memory effect (SME). The lamellas were hot formed into rings, which were trained in bending. Diameter reduction of trained enlarged rings, on heating, was monitored by cinematographic analysis.