DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF C-SHAPED SUPERELASTIC SMA SHEET WITH CONSTANT FORCE

Constant force component is very useful in medical device, such as forceps with constant force, which may prevent soft tissues from injures due to overloading. This paper studied the optimization procedure in constant force component for superelastic shape memory alloy, and tried to find the rule of obtaining constant force within a relatively large deformation range for superelastic C-shaped shape memory alloy sheet. The optimization concept of combing finite element analysis in ANSYS with genetic algorithm in MATLAB was presented for designing constant force component using superelastic SMA. The computational optimization and experimental results of the C-shaped shape memory alloy sheet showed that the proposed optimization method was potential for superelastic shape memory alloy. The optimization results were consistent with the experimental results. It was demonstrated that constant force could be obtained within a relatively large deformation range by varying the initial shape of the superelastic SMA component.