Energy absorption in Ni-Mn-Ga/ polymer composites

In recent years Ni-Mn-Ga has attracted considerable attention as a new kind of actuator material. Off-stoichiometric single crystals of Ni2MnGa can regularly exhibit 6% strain in tetragonal martensites and orthorhombic martensites have shown up to 10% strain when subjected to a magnetic field. These crystals are brittle and the production of single crystals can be quite costly. Terfenol-D, a commercially available giant-magnetostrictive material, suffers from some of the same drawbacks. It was found that composite materials made from Terfenol-D particles in a polymeric matrix could solve the issue of the brittleness while retaining a large fraction of the strain output of the alloy. At first glance a similar approach could be used to solve the brittleness issue of Ni-Mn-Ga, but the low blocking force of these alloys reduces the chances of achieving a Ni-Mn-Ga/polymer composite actuator. However, the stress-strain loops for Ni-Mn-Ga show a large mechanical hysteresis. This ability to dissipate energy makes this alloys very desirable for damping applications, and by putting particles of Ni-Mn-Ga in a composite, their brittleness becomes less of an issue.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Feuchtwanger, Jorge

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Samuel M. Allen and Robert O'Handley.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35311

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35311