NitinolUniversity.com

In this Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance paper published in February 2011, Alan Pelton reviews the fundamental principles of Nitinol fatigue from a microstructural perspective. Thermal and mechanical fatigue are discussed, with supporting data from DSC, TEM, and tensile testing illustrating mechanisms and and implications of fatigue in…

Presented at SMST-2010, and now published in the journal Biomaterials, Amanda Runciman and her collaborators present new studies on the multiaxial fatigue performance of Nitinol.

Download the paper here: 163_Runciman_EquivalentStrain_Coffin-Manson_MultiaxialFatigue.pdf

Now in its third year, the FDA / NHLBI / NSF Workshop on Computer Methods for Cardiovascular Devices brings together a unusual mix of folks from industry, academia, regulatory, and funding organizations. This year’s theme focuses on the integration of nonclinical and computer models. Like previous years,…

At the recent SMST conference, we presented our Open Stent Design for the first time, and received lot of great feedback from the crowd. We previously introduced the idea here, and posted a detailed…

In this introduction to the second chapter of Nitinol: The Book, Tom introduces the shape memory effect as it relates…

In Chapter 2 of Nitinol: The Book, Tom introduces some basic principles of phase transformations in metals. As unusual as Nitinol is, the superelastic and shape memory properties driving these a byproduct of phase transformations that are ubiquitous in virtually all materials. Read on to…

In this SMST-2010 presentation, Craig advocates for applying some principles from the open source and creative commons movements to medical implant design. Power to the people! This project was first introduced in a previous post, and has a permanent home at the Read more »

In this SMST-2010 presentation, Jennifer presents data comparing the corrosion and biocompatibility performance of wire formed and laser cut stents having virtually identical starting geometry. Both groups were electropolished to remove <5%, <10%, and <25% material. Results indicate that the corrosion resistance increases with the amount material removal, and…

About two years ago, in May 2008, NDC regained its independence as a privately held company. To celebrate our one year anniversary, in May 2009, we launched a new brand identity and website at www.nitinol.com. This year, for our two year anniversary, we introduce a new feature…

“Killer App” may not be the best term to use to describe a medical component, but if such a thing exists in the world of Nitinol, its the vascular stent. In the past fifteen years or so, these tiny metallic scaffolds have changed the practice of medicine, improved the…

What does the future hold for Nitinol? In this chapter, Tom speculates about the potential of shape memory applications, R-phase, and such emerging technologies…

Nitinol isn’t the only shape memory game in town, though its unique combination of properties has made it the most commercially successful. Did you know that there are alloys of brass, bronze, and iron, that also exhibit shape memory effects? In this post, Tom discusses some of the other…

The history of steel dates thousands of years to ancient times, stainless steel has been prominent for about a hundred years, and Nitinol for perhaps a couple of decades. In this short chapter, Tom traces the ancestors of modern nickel titanium, dating to the 1930′s. Read on for more… Read more »

The “shape memory triangle” introduces the concepts of shape memory and superelasticity effects in Nitinol. This quick installment includes the first of many figures…

Today we introduce an exciting new original series to NitinolUniversity.com. Over twenty years have passed since the famously out-of-print Engineering Aspects of Shape Memory Alloys was published. In the subsequent decades, Tom Duerig, Alan Pelton, and colleagues here at NDC have learned quite a bit, and we’ve set out…

By the year 2003, Nitinol stents played a dominant role in the treatment of peripheral vascular disease. A great variety of designs had been launched into clinical service, some more successfully than others. This review was authored by the familiar NDC trio of Dieter Stoeckel, Alan Pelton, and Tom…

In this paper from the proceedings of proceedings of SPIE, Tom Duerig, Dieter Stoeckel, and David Johnson presents some basic information on the properties of superelasticity and shape memory exhibited by Nitinol. The authors describe vascular applications including stents and filters, and some testing and characterization…

When mining our server logs in preparation for creating NitinolUniversity.com, we found that two articles in our literature database had far and away more hits than any other. So, it seems fitting that the first paper in our spotlight should be this 1999 classic by our own Tom Duerig,…