Modeling the mechanical behavior of an SMA manipulator

Abstract

In this work a manipulator made of a shape memory alloy (SMA) and driven by thermoelectric modules is described. The mechanical output of the manipulator is obtained during the phase transformation of the SMA. To control the mechanical output, the relation between the transformation and the deformation of the SMA has to be determined. In this paper, a phenomenological model is proposed to predict the mechanical behavior of the SMA manipulator. Its validity is confirmed by a comparison of the deformation results between the numerical simulation and experiments.