Description

This book describes several novel applications currently under investigation that exploit the unique actuator and sensor capabilities of smart material compounds. In addition to present and projected applications, this book provides comprehensive coverage of both linear and nonlinear modeling techniques necessary to characterize materials in a manner that facilitates transducer design and control development. The author focuses on ferroelectric, magnetic, and shape memory compounds and also addresses applications exploiting amorphous and ionic polymers, magnetorheological compounds, and fiber optic sensors. Three classes of nonlinear models are discussed, all of which provide unified characterization frameworks for the broad class of combined compounds. Discussions of structural models based on linear and nonlinear constitutive models, and numerical techniques for approximating solutions to the structural systems are included. An extensive glossary of terms is provided in an appendix, as well as MATLAB software for representative models at an accompanying website.