Determination of single crystal thermal expansion in Uranium-6wt%Niobium shape memory alloy using in-situ diffraction and modeling of textured polycrystalline samples

•In-situ neutron diffraction during thermal cycling of uranium-6wt%niobum was performed for four differently texture samples.•Ex-situ dilatometry was performed on textured samples corresponding to the in-situ neutron diffraction.•Crystal based thermoelastic self-consistent modeling was used to extract the single crystal thermal expansion of the monoclinic α″ phase from in-situ neutron diffraction between 5K and 473K.•Modeling and experiments reveal the role of transformation strain, shape memory effect, and twin boundary motion in the observed thermal behavior.•The α″ phase remains stable down to 5K.