Fatigue of NiTi for dampers and actuators

The application of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) devices to practical uses need well established performance. The reliable application in some areas, as dampers in engineering, needs a known, relatively long fatigue life (some million oscillations). The thermomechanical properties of SMA, based on their martensitic transformation, made them attractive to use for damping, taking advantage of the pseudoelastic window and hysteresis on transforming-retransforming. Due to size effects and to the fact that fatigue failure in metallic NiTi usually comes from a defect inducing crack growth, fatigue has to be studied for concrete applications, with the correct samples. The present work points out the possibility to apply NiTi to dampers and actuators. Testing machine experiments indicate that the main parameter controlling fatigue life is the effective stress on the NiTi wire. Long wire life (in the million cycle regime) can be achieved under limited stresses (around or under 200 MPa). Also, experiments have been done on thermal actuation of NiTi wire under traction at constant load. The results demonstrate that long actuator life (larger than 300000 cycles) can be achieved at low stresses (around 100 MPa), coherently with the mechanical cycling. From our results, NiTi is useful to effectively damp vibrations even at relatively low stresses and strains. The experimental results from facilities (cable No. 1 in ELSA-JRC, Ispra, Italy, and IFSTTAR test cable, near Nantes, France) confirm that NiTi wire is able to damp stayed cables.