F. Zhou, M. H. Wu, Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, CA; S. Zhang, ev3 Endovascular Inc, Plymouth, MN
Superelastic Nitinol tubing has been widely used in various medical applications owing to their superelasticity and excellent bio-compatibility. It is well known that Nitinol alloys exhibit a highly asymmetrical tension-compression deformation behavior, which complicates successful device design and computational modeling of the mechanical performance. So far very limited data are found on the compressive mechanical properties of Nitinol tubing. In this study, mechanical properties of superelastic Nitinol tubing were measured by means of uniaxial tension-compression and bend tests. The correlation between tension-compression data and bend test results was studied and the feasibility of using bend test to predict the compression behavior of Nitinol was evaluated.
Summary: In this study, mechanical properties of superelastic Nitinol tubing were measured by means of uniaxial tension-compression and bending tests. The correlation between tension-compression data and bending test results was studied and the feasibility of using bending test to predict the compression behavior of Nitinol was evaluated.
