Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are used in diverse engineering and medical applications capitalizing on their sensing and actuation capabilities. This is attributed to the high magnitude of recovery strain and recovery stress that they are capable of generating. But shape memory alloys exhibit complex behaviour in the presence of electrical and magnetic fields as well as mechanical stress. Their behaviour in these domains is to be rightly and comprehensively understood if these are to be used in these applications. Over the years finite element analysis has proved to be a powerful tool for studying the behaviour of SMAs under different conditions and has therefore been applied in many important applications. In this paper an attempt has therefore been made to understand the behaviour of an equiatomic NiTi alloy wire under mechanical stress by finite element analysis using commercially available software MSC Marc.Simulation of an SMA wire with 0.5 mm diameter and 351 mm length was carried out in uniaxial tension by finite element analysis. The simulation involves three stages: geometric modelling using the software MSC.Patran. Finite element modelling also uses the same software, and finally arriving at the solution using the software MSC.Marc.The finte element model is created by meshing the geometric model using Element type Tetmesh4. Boundary conditions are then applied using MSC Mentat software followed by arriving at the solution using Auricchio model. The stress-strain behaviour of the equiatomic NiTinol wire under simple uniaxial tensile loading at different temperatures was simulated.
Effects of superelasticity and plasticity on the spherical indentation response of shape memory alloys: a finite element analysis
