Current State of Applying Smart Materials in Consumer Durables: A Literature Survey

Abstract

Smart materials have drawn substantial attention and interest in a broad range of applications, due to their unique and superior characteristics. However there is a blurry image over the potential applications of smart materials in consumer durables. This has stalled further research and decision making in initiating the development of consumer durables based on smart material technologies. This literature survey investigates the applications of smart materials in consumer durables in a retrospective manner. It formulates a conceptual foundation for exploring potential application areas and opportunities. In this paper, publications revealing to the applications of smart materials are structurally reviewed. The publications have been categorized based on seven classes of smart materials. The analysis revealed the frequency distribution of the publications based on the reported application of smart materials in ten consumer durable categories. The results show that shape changing smart material is the most frequently used and widely distributed class of smart material. Moreover the publications informed us that the knowledge on shape changing smart materials are more ‘readily accessible’ then that on other classes of smart material. Nonetheless, shape changing smart materials applications in consumer durables are still limited. On the basis of our main findings we discussed about the new opportunities and directions for future research and application in consumer durables. As conclusion to this research, cross-disciplinary research between the domain of material engineering and product design were proposed in order to improve the situation. Furthermore it could be done through dedicated methods and software tools, which allows the exploration of relationship between the requirements of specific applications regarding the characteristics of shape changing smart materials.