STUDY ON SMA INTELLIGENT STRUCTURES FOR CRACK CONTROL

The shape memory effect of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) was used for crack active control in an intelligent component,which was made up with TiNi belts embedded in metal matrix.A linearized constitutive relation of SMA embedded in the matrix has been derived.Such a constitutive relation can be used easily in commercial finite element programs to treat the shape memory effect as the thermal effect of conventional materials.This method was applied to the numerical ananlysis of the intelligent component.Moire Interferometric tests were carried out on the component.Comparison of the calculated with test results shows that the effect of the active control is remarkable,and the computational method is feasible.