austenitic structure upon warming excellent damping characteristics are possessed by such alloys when in their martensitic state thus the present invention includes the use of alloys having major proportions of titanium and nickel which alloys exist in the martensitic state at the operating temperature of the metallic member means for establishing a desired transformation temperature are known and include varying the percentage of titanium and nickel furthermore the transformation temperature may be adjusted by the addition of small amounts of other metals such as cobalt iron aluminum and manganese a more complete disclosure of the nature of such alloys may be found in an application filed july 2 1970 by john d harrison et al ser no 51 809 now abandoned and an application filed on the same day by harrison et al ser no 52 112 now u s pat no 3 753 700 issued aug 21 1973 both the application and the patent are assigned to the assignee of the present invention the disclosures of these two applications are incorporated by reference herein for purposes of background information a typical alloy useful in the practice of the present invention contains the following metals expressed in atomic percent 50 ti 50 ni such an alloy has a loss tangent of 0 036 and a shear modulus of 2 87 u00d7 10 6 pounds per square inch in general metals to which the property of heat recoverability may be imparted have good damping characteristics when such metals are in their low temperature.