Design and fabrication of a smart flexible structure using Shape Memory Alloy wire (SMA)

The smart structure is broadly applied in various fields. One of main part of smart structure is actuator. To develop smart structure, many kinds of actuators were studied. Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) is one of them. SMA actuator demonstrates large deformation and good repeatability, in spite of hysteresis, it is one of the most generally applied actuator in smart structure. In this research, a smart flexible structure was developed, which is comprise of SMA spring, Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) body and Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) cover. It was developed to be applied to robot as manipulator module showing bending motion. The fabrication of the smart flexible structure is described in this paper. And its performance was tested. Using CCD camera sensor, the bending motion of the smart flexible structure was measured. A coordinate value change of one point of smart flexible structure was measured and the results were analyzed. And a circuit with the pulse width modulation (PWM) controller was designed to control the motion of smart flexible actuator.