Challenges of the interaction between shape memory alloy producers and the rest of the industrial supply chain – a case study on handling thin SMA actuator wires

In the past decade, Shape Memory Alloy actuators have become more and more successful. Even though the market is s4ll by far outweighed by the applica4ons in the medical sector, the technical and economic advantages of SMA in industrial actuator systems give this field a growing importance. Several products with more than 1 Mio. Components per year have been introduced in the automo4ve sector alone. However, while more R&D-departments open up to solu4ons based on Smart Materials such as SMA, other par4cipants of the supply chain are s4ll lacking the most basic knowledge on how to handle SMA components. This is at best an annoyance or a reason for misunderstanding, or worse, a risk for real economical damage. It is an important task for the SMA industry to take the lead, and either educate the counterparts or eliminate the necessity to understand SMA at all. The first approach can work, if the partner is open-minded, not as a single person but as an organiza4on. The second approach implies the goal to develop a “black box”, which is an actuator system with all the benefits, but without the need for the customer to actually handle SMA products. In this work, we present a case study on a thin wire actuator project, and the possible effects both approaches have on the success of that project.