Nucleation Barriers for the Cubic‐to‐Tetragonal Phase Transformation

We are interested in the phase transformation from austenite to martensite. This transformation is typically accompanied by the generation and growth of small inclusions of martensite. We consider a model from geometrically linear elasticity with sharp energy penalization for phase boundaries. Focusing on a cubic‐to‐tetragonal phase transformation, we show that the minimal energy for an inclusion of martensite scales like $\max \{ V^{2/3}, V^{9/11} \}$ in terms of the volume V . Moreover, our arguments illustrate the importance of self‐accommodation for achieving the minimal scaling of the energy. The analysis is based on Fourier representation of the elastic energy. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.