Shape Memory Alloy Engineering

Chapter 1

Historical Background and Future Perspectives

Antonio Concilio¹,  and Leonardo Lecce^2     1The Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA), Capua (CE), Italy     ²Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Abstract

Shape memory alloys (SMA) have the fascinating characteristic of recovering apparent permanent deformations up to 10% and more. Moreover, they are metals and exhibit the typical characteristics of metals like resistance, stiffness, workability, and so on. The combination of all these properties makes it easy to understand why these materials are attractive to the field of engineering and gave rise to a new way of thinking about the design of mechanical systems. Some SMA have the incredible ...