Investigation on Actuation Characteristics of the Tailor Made NiTi Shape Memory Alloy Structures Fabricated Through Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) Technique
I.A.Palani, 1S. S. Mani Prabu2, , M. Manikandan1, Vinod Singh Thakur1, Ankita Sahu1, Shalini Singh1, C. P. Paul3
1Discipline of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Indore(IIT-I), India
2MEMS, IIT –I, India
3RRCAT, Indore, India
Bulk NiTi shape memory alloy structures have potential applications in machine tool development. In particular as customized SMA structures can be employed as vibration dampers and intelligent tool holders. However developing customized structures is a challenging task. Fabricating NiTi structures through additive manufacturing is a promising was of fabricating customized structures, however the shape memory effect in particular the actuation characteristics is bit challenging and reported elsewhere. In this research for the first time we report the visible actuation of shape memory fabricated through Wire Arc based Additive manufacturing (WAAM) route. The customized splines like structures are fabricated using in-house developed WAAM unit by feeding NiTi wire. The parameters are optimized for efficient deposition. The as fabricated structures were annealed. The phase transformation characteristics and the crystallization characteristics were investigated through DSC and XRD analysis. DMA and compression test was performed to investigate the mechanical behavior. In order to investigate the actuation behavior and in house developed joule heating setup was used, the actuation characteristics including the life cycle behavior was investigated in detail at different load conditions. It was observed that as fabricated SMA structures showed a 94% recovery even beyond 100 cycles.