A comparison of FE beam and continuum elements for typical nitinol stent geometries

Wesley Ballew; Stefan Seelecke

doi:10.1117/12.816654

31 March 2009 A comparison of FE beam and continuum elements for typical nitinol stent geometries

Wesley Ballew, Stefan Seelecke

Proceedings Volume 7289, Behavior and Mechanics of Multifunctional Materials and Composites 2009; 72890R (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.816654
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2009, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

With interest in improved efficiency and a more complete description of the SMA material, this paper compares finite element (FE) simulations of typical stent geometries using two different constitutive models and two different element types. Typically, continuum elements are used for the simulation of stents, for example the commercial FE software ANSYS offers a continuum element based on Auricchio's SMA model. Almost every stent geometry, however, is made up of long and slender components and can be modeled more efficiently, in the computational sense, with beam elements. Using the ANSYS user programmable material feature, we implement the free energy based SMA model developed by Mueller and Seelecke into the ANSYS beam element 188. Convergence behavior for both, beam and continuum formulations, is studied in terms of element and layer number, respectively. This is systematically illustrated first for the case of a straight cantilever beam under end loading, and subsequently for a section of a z-bend wire, a typical stent sub-geometry. It is shown that the computation times for the beam element are reduced to only one third of those of the continuum element, while both formulations display a comparable force/displacement response.

Citation Download Citation

Wesley Ballew and Stefan Seelecke "A comparison of FE beam and continuum elements for typical nitinol stent geometries", Proc. SPIE 7289, Behavior and Mechanics of Multifunctional Materials and Composites 2009, 72890R (31 March 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.816654

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