Analysis of performance and energy efficiency of thin shape memory alloy wire-based actuators

摘要

Recently actuators based on smart materials have attracted considerable interest in the field of Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), due to their potential to provide high power-to-weight ratio. Shape memory alloy (SMA) s are effective these material for actuation because of their lightweight, low power consumption, and heating actuated and superelastic properties. The objective of the current study concerns the selection of the appropriate design configuration for thin SMA wire-based actuators. We proposed two compact SMA-wire based rotary actuators, which use thin SMA wires or extension spring in antagonist configuration. The main contributions of this paper are the study of position tracking performance of the proposed actuators on a purpose designed reconfigurable experimental test bed as a proof-of-concept together with evaluation of their energy efficiency.