查看文章

Nowadays, shape memory alloys (SMAs) and in particular Ni–Ti alloys are commonly used in bioengineering applications as they join important qualities as resistance to corrosion, biocompatibility, fatigue resistance, MR compatibility, kink resistance with two unique thermo-mechanical behaviors: the shape memory effect and the pseudoelastic effect. They allow Ni–Ti devices to undergo large mechanically induced deformations and then to recover the original shape by thermal loading or simply by mechanical unloading. A numerical model is developed to catch the most significant SMA macroscopic thermo-mechanical properties and is implemented into a commercial finite element code to simulate the behavior of biomedical devices. The comparison between experimental and numerical response of an intravascular coronary stent allows to verify the model suitability to …