In order to set an appropriate deformation rate, preliminary tests have been conducted between
14.3 · 10−3 s−1 and 71.4 · 10−3 s−1 (i.e. 1 mm/s and 5 mm/s, respectively) concluding that results
were not affected by the choice. Thus, a deformation rate of 28.6 · 10−3 s−1 (i.e. 2 mm/s) has been
selected as a trade-off between noisy measurements and long time-consuming tests that would have
occurred with the choice of high and low rates, respectively. The deformation time-history, for each
temperature, is composed by ten loading cycles described as follows: