This paper describes a fatigue test protocol that was used to determine the factor of safety for a superelastic Nitinol implantable medical device. A rotating cam test apparatus was designed to collect the necessary life-cycle data. Fatigue test specimens were designed as scaled-up versions of the implantable device and processed in accord with the established manufacturing specifications for the actual device. This insured that the local strain conditions as well as material processing effects would be accounted for in the characterization of the material’s fatigue limit.
You can download our paper on superelastic Nitinol fatigue that was published in the Society for Experimental Mechanics journal Experimental Techniques. The work was also published in the SMST 2000 Proceedings:[email-download download_id=”3051″ contact_form_id=”2960″]