Investigation of the Thermomechanical Response of Shape Memory Alloy Hybrid Composite Beams

Abstract

The goal of this study is to conduct static, thermal buckling, post-buckling, and dynamic inertial random excitation response experiments on SMAHC beams under clamped boundary conditions. The experimental data demonstrates the ability of the embedded SMA actuators to adaptively stiffen the structure. The presence of clamped boundary conditions with the addition of an applied thermal load to activate the SMA actuators leads to structural instability. Therefore analysis of the experiments involved the study of thermal buckling, and the thermo-elastic constitutive model must be implemented into a finite element code capable of analyzing these types of responses. Additionally, the experiments consisted of precise measuring techniques, such as an infrared thermal imaging camera, laser displacement transducer, and Projection Moire' Interferometry (PMI) to accurately capture the static and dynamic response phenomena of the SMAHC beams. Precise measurements of material properties and geometric configurations are used as input into ABAQUS making use of the thermo-elastic model to accurately model the experimental results. As a result, the study shows an accurate measurement of the attractive functionality of SMAHC structures, and validates the use of a thermo-elastic constitutive model to accurately capture the behavior.