Textile Actuators

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Nitinol and Felt (test 4): the "jellyfish"

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The wire was pre-annealed to be plastic. Raw Nitinol is usually superelastic.

If you want shape memory wire then you must anneal the raw wire for 15 minutes by 500°C.

Then it lose its superelasticity and becomes shape memory wire.

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Flexinol wire system

Muscle wire, also known as flexinol was the particular smart material that was chosen to be investigated for this project.

Flexinol is a shape memory alloy actuator wire. Made of nickel-titanium these small diameter wires contract (typically 2% to 5% of their length) like muscles when electrically driven or heated.

Although, the contraction might seem small, it is accompanied by such force that it can easily be applied through levers and linkages to achieve much larger movements.