A model for shape memory alloys with the possibility of voids

The paper is devoted to the study of a mathematical model for the thermomechanical evolution of metallic shape memory alloys. The main novelty of our approach consists in the fact that we include the possibility for these materials to exhibit voids during the phase change process. Indeed, in the engineering paper [60] has been recently proved that voids may appear when the mixture is produced by the aggregations of powder. Hence, the composition of the mixture varies (under either thermal or mechanical actions) in this way: the martensites and the austenite transform into one another whereas the voids volume fraction evolves. The first goal of this contribution is hence to state a PDE system capturing all these modelling aspects in order then to establish the well-posedness of the associated initial-boundary value problem.