S. Alacqua, M. Biasiotto, G. Capretti, T. Luchetti, A. Zanella, Centro Ricerche FIAT, Orbassano, Italy
In the past the main driver for the vehicle’s technological innovation was the cost reduction. Nowadays priorities like legislative requirement (safety increase, emissions, fuel economy…) and customer satisfaction (comfort and ergonomics improvement, increasing of performances) are getting more and more important for a sustainable growth. As a consequence the complexity of automobiles has increased as demonstrated by the growing number of actuations and on board sensors.
In this scenario SMs can give significant benefits and perform new functions with volume and cost reduction, an more design flexibility. In the last years CRF has conduced a feasibility phase with interesting results in terms of integration of SMA devices into interior and exterior applications. An activity to enhance the SMA’s characteristics has been also carried out in order meet the automotive requirements with particular focus on stability and the reliability improvement.
Nevertheless SMA devices’ design is still far from the point of view of automotive designers and engineers that traditionally use a mechanically oriented approach to face problems and to enhance performance and functionality of the automobile; very often the preferred solution is more bulky, massive and expensive than the new one.
Expanding the solution domain beyond the purview of traditional mechanical approaches is a CRF’s effort too. This presentation will give an historical overview of the use of SMA in the automotive field and a review of CRF’s approach to transitioning the technology into applications, highlighting standard and SMA’s design peculiarities.
Summary: A survey on CRF's experience on the development of Shape Memory Alloy devices for automotive applications
