SMART MATERIALS AND SENSORS

Computer Engineering electronics Engineering Civil Engineering

Now days, smart materials have found an important place in the modern engineering applications. Smart materials or intelligent materials system include integration of sensors, actuators and control with a material or structural component possesses intelligent and life features .The development of smart material is inspired by the biological structure systems and their basic characteristics of functionality, efficiency, precision, self - repair and durability. Smart materials are not only singular materials but also Hybrid composites or integrated systems of materials. Shape Memory Alloys are one of the major categories of smart materials which after being strained at certain temperature revert back to the original shape because of unique properties such as Shape Memory effect, Pseudo elasticity and high damping capacity. These properties in smart hybrid composites provide them the tremendous potential for creating new paradigms for material-structural interactions and demonstrate various successes in engineering applications like Aeronautical engineering, in medical fields like Vascular stents and Osteosynthesis etc., and in commercial fields also. The main advantages of shape memory alloys are, they are Bio-compatible, strong and good corrosion resistant. They generally have high power to weight ratio and can withstand large amount of recoverable strain and when heated above transition temperature, they can exert high recovery stresses of 700MPa which can be used to perform work. In this paper, we are presenting one of the major categories of smart materials, SMAs, their properties, different types of SMAs and their applications in various fields loading..