Development of shape memory alloy actuators with inherent guidance function

Shape-Memory-Alloys (SMA) are suited for miniaturized drives since they possess a high specific workload and scalability. However, most SMA drives still require guidance to realize stiffness. But, there is a design approach for actuators which realize both. Here, the stiffness in the non-moving directions is achieved by the arrangement of the SMA as wire robot. This paper presents a general description of such actuators. Based on that the design of such actuators is formulated as a mathematical optimization algorithm providing a correlation between the variables for design and specification. In order to evaluate this approach, a rotary and a linear actuator are designed and experimentally investigated.