PERFORMANCE AND DESIGN OF PRECISION-CAST SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY BRAIN SPATULA

In order to develop a brain spatula made of a shape memory alloy (SMA), this paper discusses the bending characteristics of a new brain spatula precision-cast in a TiNi SMA. The results obtained can be summed up as follows. (1) With respect to an SMA-brain spatula having the same length and width as the existing type made of copper, if the new cast SMA spatula is 1.2 times as great in thickness as the existing copper spatula, or if a conventionally rolled SMA spatula is 1.3 times as great, the SMA instrument will offer the same bending rigidity and withstand almost as great a bending force as the copper one. (2) Expressing the bending fatigue life of the copper or SMA in the region of low-cycle fatigue as a power function of the maximum bending strain, the fatigue life of the SMA is longer than that of the copper. For both the cast and the rolled SMAs, the fatigue life is longer under pulsating-plane bending than under alternating plane bending.