STRESS ANALYSIS AND FATIGUE LIFE PREDICTION OF PSEUDOELASTIC NITI SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY TAPERED STRESS JOINT VIA FINITE ELEMENT METHOD A Thesis by A-LIM KIM Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Chair of Committee, James Boyd Committee Members, Darren Hartl Moo-Hyun Kim Intercollegiate Faculty Chair, Efstratios Pistikopoulos August 2017 Major Subject: Energy Copyright 2017 Alim Kim