🧪 Materials Science Smart Materials Simulation

This simulation demonstrates a smart material's ability to respond to external stimuli — here, a superelastic Nitinol (NiTi) wire responding to applied mechanical stress rather than heat. Stretching the wire drives a stress-induced martensitic phase transformation that visibly propagates along its length as a moving band; because that transformation releases and absorbs real latent heat, loading the wire warms it and unloading it cools it below room temperature — the elastocaloric effect at the heart of next-generation solid-state refrigeration. Drag the strain control (or start the auto-cycle) to load and unload the wire, tune the loading rate to move between adiabatic and near-isothermal behaviour, and adjust ambient temperature to see the Clausius–Clapeyron shift in transformation stress, all while a live stress–strain hysteresis loop and temperature readout track the underlying thermomechanics in real time.