No abstract

Conventional superelastic orthodontic wires are arch-shaped, have the same mechanical properties all along their length and are used to correct the position of teeth. The disadvantage of these archwires is that there are different types of teeth in the mouth and different forces are therefore needed to rectify their position. The aim of this work was to laser weld several types of NiTi orthodontic wires that had different chemical compositions and superelastic properties, in order to adjust their properties to different parts of the mouth. Microstructural changes, transformation stresses and temperatures, variations in corrosion behaviour and ion release were studied in the welded wires.

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The necessary physical properties for CuAlBe and, also tentatively, for NiTi alloys are analyzed at mesoscopic scale via static and dynamic contributions. The long time scale of the civil engineering (more than 10 or 20 years) requires analysis of the diffusion effects acting on microscopic scales. Simplified models for CuAlBe and NiTi dampers are built inside the ANSYS software scheme ensuring faster simulation for a three arch (or portico) in a family house. The dynamic simulation using accelerations of actual quakes (i.e., El Centro) shows that the SMA dampers reduce the amplitude of free oscillations by, at least, a factor two.

No abstract