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A review of shape memory alloy research,

applications and opportunities
ARTICLE in MATERIALS AND DESIGN APRIL 2014
Impact Factor: 3.5 DOI: 10.1016/j.matdes.2013.11.084

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University of Kuala Lumpur

RMIT University

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Aleksandar Subic

Mark Gibson

Swinburne University of Technology

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Materials and Design 56 (2014) 10781113

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Review

A review of shape memory alloy research, applications

and opportunities
Jaronie Mohd Jani a,b,, Martin Leary a, Aleksandar Subic a, Mark A. Gibson c
a
b
c

School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne 3083, Australia
Institute of Product Design and Manufacturing, Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
CSIRO Process Science and Engineering, Private Bag 33, Clayton South MDC, Victoria 3169, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 17 September 2013
Accepted 16 November 2013
Available online 17 December 2013
Keywords:
Shape memory alloy
Shape memory materials
Automotive
Aerospace
Biomedical
Robotics

a b s t r a c t
Shape memory alloys (SMAs) belong to a class of shape memory materials (SMMs), which have the ability
to memorise or retain their previous form when subjected to certain stimulus such as thermomechanical or magnetic variations. SMAs have drawn significant attention and interest in recent years in a broad
range of commercial applications, due to their unique and superior properties; this commercial development has been supported by fundamental and applied research studies. This work describes the attributes of SMAs that make them ideally suited to actuators in various applications, and addresses their
associated limitations to clarify the design challenges faced by SMA developers. This work provides a
timely review of recent SMA research and commercial applications, with over 100 state-of-the-art patents; which are categorised against relevant commercial domains and rated according to design objectives of relevance to these domains (particularly automotive, aerospace, robotic and biomedical).
Although this work presents an extensive review of SMAs, other categories of SMMs are also discussed;
including a historical overview, summary of recent advances and new application opportunities.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The technology push, towards smart systems with adaptive
and/or intelligent functions and features, necessitates the increased use of sensors, actuators and micro-controllers; thereby
resulting in an undesirable increase in weight and volume of the
associated machine components. The development of high functional density and smart applications must overcome technical
and commercial restrictions, such as available space, operating
environment, response time and allowable cost [1]. In particular,
for automotive construction and design: increased mass directly
results in increased fuel consumption, and automotive suppliers
are highly cost-constrained. Research on the application of smart
technologies must concentrate on ensuring that these smart
systems are compatible with the automotive environment and
existing technologies [1]. The integration and miniaturisation of
integrated micro-controllers and advanced software has enabled
considerable progress in the field of automotive sensors and control electronics. However, the technical progress for automotive
actuators is relatively poorly advanced [2]. Currently, there are
Corresponding author at: School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing
Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne 3083, Australia. Tel.: +61 405552605.
E-mail addresses: jaronie@iprom.unikl.edu.my (J. Mohd Jani), martin.leary@
rmit.edu.au (M. Leary), aleksandar.subic@rmit.edu.au (A. Subic), mark.gibson@
csiro.au (M.A. Gibson).
0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2013.11.084

about 200 actuation tasks are performed on vehicles with conventional electro-magnetic motors, which are potentially sub-optimal
for weight, volume and reliability [3].
Shape memory alloy (SMA) or smart alloy was first discovered
by Arne lander in 1932 [4], and the term shape-memory was
first described by Vernon in 1941 [5] for his polymeric dental
material. The importance of shape memory materials (SMMs)
was not recognised until William Buehler and Frederick Wang revealed the shape memory effect (SME) in a nickel-titanium (NiTi)
alloy in 1962 [6,7], which is also known as nitinol (derived from
the material composition and the place of discovery, i.e. a combination of NiTi and Naval Ordnance Laboratory). Since then, the demand for SMAs for engineering and technical applications has been
increasing in numerous commercial fields; such as in consumer
products and industrial applications [810], structures and composites [11], automotive [2,12,13], aerospace [1417], mini actuators and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) [16,1821],
robotics [2224], biomedical [16,18,2530] and even in fashion
[31]. Although iron-based and copper-based SMAs, such as Fe
MnSi, CuZnAl and CuAlNi, are low-cost and commercially
available, due to their instability, impracticability (e.g. brittleness)
[3234] and poor thermo-mechanic performance [35]; NiTi-based
SMAs are much more preferable for most applications. However,
each material has their own advantage for particular requirements
or applications.