Simulation of superelastic SMA helical springs

Shape memory alloy (SMA) helical springs have found a large number of different applications in industries including biomedical devices and actuators. According to the application of SMA springs in different actuators, they are usually under tension and torsion loadings. The ability of SMAs in recovering inelastic strains is due to martensitic phase transformation between austenite and martensite phases. Stress or temperature induced martensite transformation induced of SMAs is a remarkable property which makes SMA springs more superior in comparison with traditional springs. The present paper deals with the simulation of SMA helical spring at room temperature. Three-dimensional phenomenological constitutive model is used to describe superelastic behavior of helical spring. This constitutive model is implemented as a user subroutine through ABAQUS STANDARD (UMAT), and the process of the implementation is presented. Numerical results show that the developed constitutive model provides an appropriate approach to captures the general behavior of SMA helical springs.