Fabrisonic has been working closely with Ohio State University for some time.  Today we attended the annual meeting of the Smart Vehicle Concept Center.  Current projects include the development of smart materials and devices for vehicle use.  This pre-competitive technology is shared among contributing members.

Fabrisonic has been working with Dr Marcelo Dapino and his students to embed a shape memory alloy, nitinol, into an aluminum matrix.  The team has achieved a material with almost 50% nitinol by volume.  As the material is heated the aluminum expands.  However, the nitinol goes through a phase transformation and actually contracts.  The sum of the expansion and contraction cancel out.  This creates a material with a very small coefficient of thermal expansion.  This has many applications in bearings and structures with high tolerances.

By: Mark Norfolk, President

 

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