The modern industrial and consumer applications in accordance with the concepts of Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things are characterized by autonomy and self-sufficiency. This has led to an increase in the interest for the so-called smart materials, capable of combining the functionalities of sensors, actuators and, in some applications, control systems. An important group of smart materials are shape-memory alloys, among which nickel-titanium (NiTi) alloys are the most known. In this article, the influence of phase transformation on the mechanical properties of thin NiTi alloy wires was investigated. During the test, the influence of the heating currents on the displacement and the force generated by the thin NiTi wires were analyzed. The temperature of the wires during heating was measured by a thermographic camera. This study proved the maximum value of the wires' displacement was related to the value of the heating current. During the research, the dependence of the transformation dynamics on the value of the heating currents was also proved. In addition, the influence of the surface inhomogeneity of the thin NiTi alloy wires on the accuracy of the thermographic measurements was analyzed. For the experimental research described in this article, we used the NiTi alloy whose trade name is Flexinol, produced by DYNALLOY (Inc. 2801 McGaw Ave. Irvine, CA, USA).
Keywords: NiTi; actuator; phase transformation; shape memory alloy; thermographic measurements.