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Morphing Metals
aarondubrow writes "Imagine a metal that 'remembers' its original, cold-forged shape, and can return to that shape when exposed to heat or a magnetic pulse. Like magic out of a Harry Potter novel, such a metal could contract on command, or swing back and forth like a pendulum. Believe it or not, such metals already exist. First discovered in 1931, they belong to a class of materials called 'shape memory alloys (SMA),' whose unique atomic make-up allows them to return to their initial form, or alternate between forms through a phase change."
Are we to expect a slew of articles about 80 year old discoveries now?!
SMAs have been well known about for decades, well written about for decades, just what is the point if this article?!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Imagine a carriage that propels itself without the need for horses, fuelled by otherwise useless petroleum spirits. Like magic from some Jules Verne novel, such a carriage could carry a family for hundreds of miles at high speed without tiring, and could revolutionise transportation. Belive it or not, such carriages already exist....
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Shape memory metals seem to come into the public consciousness every decade or so only to fade back into obscurity just as quickly.
Amazing stuff! A couple more decades and we'll have finally moved away from valve-based electronics, too! This truly is an era of change.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The point:
"These shape memory materials have many applications," said Raymundo Arroyave, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Texas A&M. "Despite being heavily studied for the past twenty to thirty years, most of these materials are limited to work at relatively low temperatures."
In other words, yes - the materials have existed for ages and people know that (anyone ever worn memory-flex glasses, for instance?), but there is now work underway to make the substances more useful in more difficult conditions - TFA mentions aerospace and automotive.
Cheers,
Ian
“These shape memory materials have many applications,” said Raymundo Arroyave, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Texas A&M. “Despite being heavily studied for the past twenty to thirty years, most of these materials are limited to work at relatively low temperatures.” “This new class of high temperature shape memory alloys can be used in sensing and actuation at temperatures upwards of 200 Celsius, which is very important for the aerospace and the automotive industries,” Arroyave said.
IOW what's new (or rather isn't actually yet) is "it works at higher temperatures". And that they are trying to find the new materials by simulating them with a supercomputer. Or so they hope, because "Computational materials science has a reputation for overselling and underperforming, according to Arroyave, but by all measures, the field is maturing by leaps and bounds."
Fandroids hate facts.
I didn't know that the Terminator movies were written by this Harry Potter person.
The terminator movies weren't written. They just put the robots on a stage and let them improvise.
What! It works with Keanu Reeves.
Like magic out of a Harry Potter novel? Come on, It's clearly like T1000 technology out of Terminator 2!
Are you kidding me? I use Nitinol (the main shape memory alloy) every time I put on my glasses. Many shape memory alloys exhibit a behavior other than the heat-activated shape memory effect: superelasticity. That is what allows me to bend my frames in all kinds of weird ways without having the metal permanently deform.
Imagine a car made out of this kind of metal. Someone ploughs into you, tow the car home, apply a flame and presto! off you go again.
A memory-metal Pinto would be self repairing...
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Nitinol is also used many permanent implantable medical devices such as stents http://www.euroflex-gmbh.de/pdfs/medical.pdf [PDF] and having developed a few devices with Nitinol, it is simply amazing to see it work.
Wow, slow news day. All the way back to 1931 for this story!
America, Home of the Brave.
To ensure we all know that aarondubrow and/or the /. editors are incapable of imagining that almost everyone is familiar with an 80-year-old technology that they happen to have never heard of before.
This is a common phenomenon: people generally project their own state of mind on everyone else. They are also incredibly touchy when you point this out, which tells you how deeply internalized this tendency is.
I was going to make a crack here about all the religious people who think that non-religious people have non-religion as their religion, but thinking that was too inflamatory I then considered describing my recent experience with configuring printing on an embedded Debian system, and how the documentation still fails utterly to allow the user what Eric Raymond calls "the luxury of ignorance", instead approaching the problem from an expert's point of view that is completely useless to a n00b like me, but realized that would probably be even more inflamatory, and I honestly can't think of a case that wouldn't really piss someone off, which suggests how universal the phenomenon is and how sensitive people are when you call them on it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I dunno, but there's this device called a "L.A.S.E.R." that sounds promising. Slashdot submission coming soon.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER