Model and Simulation of an SMA Enhanced Lip Seal

The feasibility of using SMA wires to improve the seal effectiveness has been studied experimentally and numerically. In this article, we present only the numerical study of simulating the thermo-mechanical behavior for an SMA enhanced lip seal, leaving the test setup and results in the experimental counterpart. A pseudo 3D SMA model, considering 1D SMA behavior in the major loading direction and elastic response in other directions, was used to capture the thermo-mechanical behavior of SMA wires. The model was then implemented into ABAQUS using the user-defined material subroutine to inherit most features of the commercial finite element package. Two-way shape memory effect was also considered since the SMA material exhibits strong two-way effects. An axisymmetric finite element model was constructed to simulate a seal mounting on a shaft and the sealing pressure was calculated for both the regular seal and the SMA enhanced seal. Finally, the result was qualitatively compared with the experimental observation.