Analysis of the pseudoelastic behavior of a SMA beam by the element-free Galerkin method

Abstract

This paper studies the numerical simulation of the pseudoelastic behavior of a shape memory alloy (SMA) beam using the element-free Galerkin method. A multi-dimensional SMA thermomechanical constitutive model is used to characterize the SMA material's pseudoelastic behavior. The explicit incremental displacement-based element-free Galerkin formulation is developed by introducing moving least squares shape functions and continuum tangent stiffness tensors into a weak form of equilibrium equation in the referential configuration. An effective approach to enforce essential boundary conditions is introduced. To assess the performance of the proposed scheme in simulating the pseudoelastic behavior, an SMA beam problem is studied with different nodal arrangements and under different temperatures during the isothermal loading–unloading cycle.