Fatigue of NiTi SMA-pulley system using Taguchi and ANOVA

Shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators can be integrated with a pulley system to provide mechanical advantage and to reduce packaging space; however, there appears to be no formal investigation of the effect of a pulley system on SMA structural or functional fatigue. In this work, cyclic testing was conducted on nickel–titanium (NiTi) SMA actuators on a pulley system and a control experiment (without pulley). Both structural and functional fatigues were monitored until fracture, or a maximum of 1E5 cycles were achieved for each experimental condition. The Taguchi method and analysis of the variance (ANOVA) were used to optimise the SMA–pulley system configurations. In general, one-way ANOVA at the 95% confidence level showed no significant difference between the structural or functional fatigue of SMA–pulley actuators and SMA actuators without pulley. Within the sample of SMA–pulley actuators, the effect of activation duration had the greatest significance for both structural and functional fatigue, and the pulley configuration (angle of wrap and sheave diameter) had a greater statistical significance than load magnitude for functional fatigue. This work identified that structural and functional fatigue performance of SMA–pulley systems is optimised by maximising sheave diameter and using an intermediate wrap-angle, with minimal load and activation duration. However, these parameters may not be compatible with commercial imperatives. A test was completed for a commercially optimal SMA–pulley configuration. This novel observation will be applicable to many areas of SMA–pulley system applications development.