Abstract The snap-action behavior of a NiTi alloy disk which is controlled by combinationof a nonlinear stress field and temperature has been studied. After treatment for two-way shapememory, all shape memory strain of snap-action finishes abruptlyat certain temperature within aintertal of less than 1ms. The results of resistance measurement and in-situ X-ray diffractionindicate that, snap-action strain is mainly resulted from snap-action β→?R transformation.