Over the years, there has been increased research interest in the application of Nitinol as an actuator, due to its shape memory behaviour, simplicity, high power-to-weight ratio, compactness, and extreme high fatigue resistance to cyclic motion, and noiseless operation. Nitinol has found application in tactile displays which reproduce tactile parameters such as texture and shape, depending on the application. This paper presents the effects of thermal interference between adjacent Nitinol spring actuators in a tactile display. The tactile display is made of a 3 by 3 pin array whose spatial resolution was varied from 4 mm to 6 mm in steps of 1 mm while a current of 1.5 A was used to actuate 8 of the springs, and the centre spring was left unactivated to observe the thermal effects on it due to the heat gradient formed. A Finite Element (FE) model was developed using COMSOL Multiphysics and the results were further verified through experimentation. In both cases, there was visible thermal interference between actuators. The increase in spatial resolution saw a decrease in thermal interference by 12.7%. Using a fan to introduce forced convection, reduced the thermal interference in the simulation by 20% and during experimentation by 11%. The results of this research indicate a spatial resolution of 6 mm reduced the thermal inference to a negligible rate. However, thermal interference could not be eliminated with these two methods.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.