The Throes of Shape Memory and Superelastic Technology Commercialization

This talk will highlight practical but not always foreseen pains along the way in the development of commercial materials and provide strategies to aid in their successful adoption. Throes, as used here, can be defined as intense or violent pain and struggle, especially accompanying great change. Shape memory and superelastic material can be defined as elegant and infinitely tunable ferroelastic matter, or, as matter with properties that can change greatly dependent on almost everything and with capability to induce violent pain in designers who underappreciate its multi-dependencies. The throes of adoption and associated technical, intellectual, and commercial pains will be highlighted for case examples, given as medical device and aerospace subcomponent technology stories spanning approximately 2012 to 2025. Stories such as the following will be shared: The rediscovery of NiTiPt fracture sensitivity; High strength NiTi-Niobium – for worse and for better; On scalable high temperature shape memory alloys; and Temperature insensitive superelastics for commercial structures.