Computational modeling of vibration damping in SMA wires

Through a mathematical and computational model of the physical behavior of shape memory alloy wires, this study shows that localized heating and cooling of such materials provide an effective means of damping vibrational energy. The thermally induced pseudo-elastic behavior of a shape memory wire is modeled using a continuum thermodynamic model and solved computationally as described by the authors in [23]. Computational experiments confirm that up to 80% of an initial shock of vibrational energy can be eliminated at the onset of a thermally-induced phase transformation through the use of spatially-distributed transformation regions along the length of a shape memory alloy wire.