An Experimental Setup for Measuring Unstable Thermo-Mechanical Behavior of a Shape Memory Alloy Wire

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. ladicola ◽  
John A. Shaw

Abstract An experimental arrangement is demonstrated that overcomes some difficulties in thermo-mechanical testing of thin Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) wires under uniaxial tension. It is now well known that stress-induced transformations in some SMAs under uniaxial loading can lead to mechanical instabilities and propagating phase transformation fronts. Critical parameters, such as nucleation barriers are difficult to measure by conventional testing techniques and are often masked by unavoidable stress concentrations at grips. In addition, simultaneous full field measurements of localized deformation and temperature fields are difficult to obtain for different ambient conditions. The current scheme uses a temperature-controlled conduction block and a non-uniform temperature field induced by thermoelectric modules to uncover the underlying thermo-mechanical response of the wire. The approach also allows access for optical and infrared imaging of the specimen deformation and temperature fields.

Author(s):  
Sherif Daghash ◽  
Osman E. Ozbulut ◽  
Muhammad M. Sherif

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) have attracted a great deal of attention as a smart material that can be used in various civil engineering applications due to their favorable mechanical properties such as ability to undergo large deformations, high corrosion and fatigue resistance, good energy dissipating capacity, and excellent re-centering ability. In contrast to the use of SMAs in the biomedical, mechanical and aerospace applications, which requires mostly small diameter of material, the larger size bars are usually needed in a civil engineering application. It is well known that properties of large-section SMA bars are generally poorer than those of wires due to difficulties in material processing. Furthermore, large diameter SMA bars are more expensive than thin SMA wires. Shape memory alloy cables have been recently developed as an alternative and new structural element. They leverage the superior mechanical characteristics of small diameter SMAs into large-size structural tension elements and possess several advantages over SMA bars. This study explores the performance of NiTi SMA cables and their potential use in civil engineering. The SMA cable, which has a diameter of 8 mm, is composed of 7 strands and each strand has 7 wires with a diameter of 0.885 mm. The uniaxial tensile tests are conducted at various loading rates and strain amplitudes to characterize the superelastic properties of the SMA cable and study the rate-dependent mechanical response of the SMA cable under dynamic loads. An optical digital image correlation measurement system and an infrared thermal imaging camera are employed to obtain the full-field strain and temperature fields. Potential applications of SMA cables in civil infrastructure applications are discussed and illustrated.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Reedlunn ◽  
Christopher Churchill ◽  
Emily Nelson ◽  
Samantha Daly ◽  
John Shaw

Many shape memory alloy (SMA) applications exploit superelasticity in a bending mode, yet the large displacements and rotations associated with bending of slender structures make controlled experiments difficult. A custom pure bending fixture was built to perform experiments on superelastic NiTi tubes. To understand the bending results, the tubes were also characterized in uniaxial tension and compression, where a custom fixture was utilized to avoid buckling. In addition to measuring the global mechanical response, stereo digital image correlation (DIC) was used in all the experiments to capture the local surface displacement and strain fields. Consistent with the tension/compression data, our bending experiments showed a significant shift of the neutral axis towards the compression side. Also, the tube had strain localization on the tension side, but no such localization on the compression side. Detailed analysis of the strain distribution across the tube diameter revealed that the usual assumption of beam theory, that plane sections remain plane, did not hold along the tension side. Averaged over a few diameters of gage length, plane sections remain plane is a reasonable assumption and can be used to predict the global moment–curvature response. However, this assumption should be used with caution since it can under/over predict local strains by as much as 2× due to the localized deformation morphology.


2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Iadicola ◽  
John A. Shaw

Abstract Experiments are presented of the response of pseudoelastic NiTi wires subjected to displacement controlled cycles. A custom built thermo-mechanical testing apparatus is used to control the background temperature field of the wire specimen while allowing the evolution of transformation fronts to be tracked by full field infrared imaging. Two experiments under similar end-displacement histories, but at temperatures ≈8°C apart, are shown to give remarkably different cyclic responses. The mechanical response for the lower temperature experiment continued to soften but retained its shape through 43 partial transformation cycles, and the pattern of transformation fronts seemed to reach a steady state. The response for the higher temperature experiment showed a change in shape of the mechanical response and distinct changes in transformation front patterns over 31 partial transformation cycles.


Author(s):  
Samantha Daly ◽  
Kaushik Bhattacharya ◽  
Guruswami Ravichandran

Nickel-Titanium, commonly referred to as Nitinol, is a shape-memory alloy with numerous applications due to its superelastic nature and its ability to revert to a previously defined shape when deformed and then heated past a set transformation temperature. While the crystallography and the overall phenomenology are reasonably well understood, much remains unknown about the deformation and failure mechanisms of these materials. These latter issues are becoming critically important as Nitinol is being increasingly used in medical devices and space applications. The talk will describe the investigation of the deformation and failure of Nitinol using an in-situ optical technique called Digital Image Correlation (DIC). With this technique, full-field quantitative maps of strain localization are obtained for the first time in thin sheets of Nitinol under tension. These experiments provide new information connecting previous observations on the micro- and macro-scale. They show that martensitic transformation initiates before the formation of localized bands, and that the strain inside the bands does not saturate when the bands nucleate. The effect of rolling texture, the validity of the widely used resolved stress transformation criterion, and the role of geometric defects are examined.


2012 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 52-57
Author(s):  
Andrea Spaggiari ◽  
Eugenio Dragoni

The paper deals with the analytical modelling of a shape memory alloy Negator spring. Negator springs are spiral springs made of strip metal wound on the flat with an inherent curvature such that, in repose, each coil wraps tightly on its inner neighbour. This configuration allows a constant force mechanical response and very long strokes, limited mainly from the total length of the spring. The authors investigate the behaviour of the spring made of a shape memory alloy (SMA). The intrinsic characteristic of SMA is to have two different elastic moduli at different temperatures. This difference can be exploited in order to have a net actuation force for the entire very long stroke, overcoming the two major drawbacks of the SMA actuators, short strokes and output force which varies linearly during the travel.


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