Mechanical behavior of NiTi arc wires under pseudoelastic cycling and cathodically hydrogen charging

NiTi wires are mainly used to design orthodontic devices. However, they may be susceptible to a delayed fracture while they are submitted to cyclic loading with the presence of hydrogen in the oral cavity. Hydrogen may cause the embrittlement of the structure, leading to lower ductility and to a change in transformation behavior. The aim of the present study is to predict the NiTi behavior under cyclic loading with hydrogen charging. One the one hand, samples are submitted to superelastic cyclic loading, which results in investigating their performance degradations. On the other hand, after hydrogen charging, cyclic tensile aging tests are carried out on NiTi orthodontic wires at room temperature in the air. During cyclic loading, we notice that the critical stress for the martensite transformation evolves, the residual strain is accumulated in the structure and the hysteresis loop changes. Thus, via this work, we can assume that the embrittlement is due to the diffusion of hydrogen and the generation of dislocations after aging. The evolution of mechanical properties of specimens becomes more significant with hydrogen charging rather than without it. (paper)