Abstract
The automotive requirements, to optimize the actuators from safety systems, push the engineers to design them using new material with special properties. One of these special materials is Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) which have the capabilities to remember their shape. The paper investigates these effects for actuator and pseudo-elastic type NiTi wires when subjected to slow (v<33mm/s) and fast testing conditions (dynamic conditions, v>1000mm/s) at various temperatures. For the dynamic investigations, a new testing plant was designed, capable of generating impact speeds of up to 4000mm/s. The energy of the system is produced by converting the potential energy of a drop weight into kinetic energy, which is then transferred to the NiTi wire sample through impact.
KEYWORDS – shape memory alloy, NiTi wires, SMA model and automotive safety systems.