6 ms·
One problem with Nitinol is that it has a limited number of cycles before the material becomes weak and then breaks or no longer returns to its proper state. T
by proee 7y ago
One problem with Nitinol is that it has a limited number of cycles before the material becomes weak and then breaks or no longer returns to its proper state.
This is a major limitation on "muscle wires" when using them for products that require a high number of cycles of greater than 100k.
- ncmncm 7y agoWhere are you getting this? The credible sources I find say they improve with use.
- proee 7y agoHere is a good article showing thermal and mechanical fatigue. You can see under moderate mechanical stress, it fails between 1e5 and 1e7 cycles. While that sounds like a lot, consider that there are 3e7 seconds in a year. So if you had a mechanical device that operated at 1HZ, it would fail in less than a year. https://www.nitinol.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Pelton-2011-NiTi-Fatigue-Microstructures-and-Mechanisms1.pdf https://www.nitinol.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Pelton-20...
- blincoln 7y agoHow difficult/expensive is it to recycle the material? i.e. if one had some sort of wonder-generator based on it, would it make sense to use a model where once per year, the owner sends the nitinol pieces back to the manufacturer (who recycles them) in exchange for a discount on replacements? I assume since titanium is part of the alloy, just discarding it after use is probably not great from a cost perspective.
- Liquix 7y agoBanks reported no weakness nor degradation in his Nitinol engine after 20,000,000 revolutions. Any idea why there's such a big difference between the numbers reported in each paper?