Smart Materials
Introduction
In the production world, the high technologies push towards the ‘Smart’ system in which we need some intelligent or smart material which can alter their properties according to our requirement. A smart material can be defined as the material which can change their behavior or their properties as per change in the atmosphere or in the response of external stimuli and these stimuli could be anything
i.e. pressure, force, temperature, stress. After the Ceramic and Composite materials the era of smart material has come.
Smart materials, also called intelligent or responsive materials, are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnetic fields, light, temperature, pH, or chemical compounds.
1.Shape memory Alloy
They have the ability to change the shape, even returning to their original shape, when exposed to a heat source, among other stimuli.
2.Piezoelectric Materials
These are also the one of the most common type of smart materials. Piezoelectric materials has tendency to produce voltage when stress is applied and same process can happens in a reversible manner. The structure made with this material can bend, expand and compress.
The piezoelectric effect takes place in all directions and can be divided into two main effects: the direct piezoelectric effect and the inverse piezoelectric effect
The direct piezoelectric effect
The direct piezoelectric effect describes as whenever mechanical stress is exerted on piezoelectric material it produces electric charges.
The inverse piezoelectric effect
The inverse piezoelectric effect is the property of piezoelectric materials to develop the strain when an electric field is applied. The inverse piezoelectric effect is also known as minor effect or actuator effect.
3.Thermo-responsive Materials
In this kind of smart materials, these materials have ability to hold different shapes at different temperature.
4.Chromoactive Materials
They change color when subjected to a certain variation in temperature, light, pressure, etc. Nowadays, they are used in sectors such as optics, among others.
Chromoactive Material are classified into three types:
(i) Thermochromic materials
(ii) Photo chromic materials
iii) Halo chromic materials.
5.pH sensitive materials
This kind of smart materials have properties to change their color when their will be the change in the acidity of the liquid. These kind of smart materials can be use to indicates the corrosion by mixing it with the paint.
Application of SMART MATERIALS
3.1 Aeronautics
The Smart material plays a great role in the field of aeronautics. In aircraft or automotive structure to reduce the vibrations we use Piezoelectric actuators. Structural Health Monitoring.
3.2 In Nuclear industries
Smart materials and smart structure offers great range of application to the nuclear filed from enhancing safety measures to the personal exposure reduction, life-cycle cost reduction and performance improvement..
3.3 In the Civil Engineering
Smart materials plays very important role in the field of engineering. It is able to detect the cracks in concrete structure, vibration of tall buildings, to predict the choc waves in the concrete and metallic structure.
3.4 In Medical field
In the field of medical science and biomedical lots of research is still going on for the better results
3.5 Reducing Waste
In a present scenario electronic and non-disposable waste is increasing day by day in all over the world. The radiation from this is also hazardous for human being should be remove first. In this situation smart materials can help to automate this process. Manufacturing of fasteners constructed from shape memory materials are used that can self-release on heating. Once these fasteners will be form then the hazardous and recyclable waste can easily separable. Using these fasteners different temperatures, products could be disassembled hierarchic
Conclusion:
The present study gives a brief summary of the stimuli responsive smart materials followed by a complete description of the some of the smart materials.
Thank You For Reading!
References
https://www.iberdrola.com/innovation/smart-materials
https://technology.nasa.gov/materials_and_coatings/mat-smartmaterials.html
