Thermo-mechanical Finite Element Analysis of a Shape Memory Alloy Cantilever Beam

摘要

Shape memory alloy (SMA) beams are used in a variety of applications such as, e.g., stents or microactuators. In this paper, a free energy based SMA model is implemented into the commercial finite element (FE) code ANSYS, and the bending problem of a SMA cantilever beam is studied. In order to determine optimal parameter settings for the finite element analysis, we systematically study convergence behavior and accuracy for different convergence criteria as well as other relevant parameters such as element, substep and integration point number. The simulation results demonstrate that the SMA model can represent both shape memory effect and superelasticity of SMA materials seamlessly.