2008, Mielke, Alexander, Paoli, Laetitia, Petrov, Adrien

This paper deals with a three-dimensional model for thermal stress-induced transformations in shape-memory materials. Microstructure, like twined martensites, is described mesoscopically by a vector of internal variables containing the volume fractions of each phase. We assume that the temperature variations are prescribed. The problem is formulated mathematically within the energetic framework of rate-independent processes. An existence result is proved and temporal regularity is obtained in case of uniform convexity. We study also space-time discretizations and establish convergence of these approximations.