Advisory Committee Chair
Douglas H Ross
Advisory Committee Members
Dalton S Nelson
Daneesh Simien
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2018
Degree Name by School
Master of Mechanical Engineering (MME) School of Engineering
Abstract
New and innovative robotic designs are always needed in both research and commercial fields. To that end, new and innovative actuators are needed as well. In this paper, a digitally controlled Nitinol actuator, Diginol, is proposed. Diginol is a Nitinol actuator that uses Joule heating to individually activate partitions of a length of Nitinol. The lengths of the partitions follow a base-2 pattern, minimizing the number of partitions required for a given number of actuation lengths. Activating separate partitions instead of the entire length of Nitinol circumvents the need to account for the hysteresis and nonlinearities inherent in the transformation of Nitinol.
Recommended Citation
Holland, Martin Dawson, "Diginol: A Joule-Heated Binary-Partitioned Nitinol Actuator" (2018). All ETDs from UAB. 1954.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/1954