Abstract
This paper reports a study on the development of an artificial rectum valve. An artificial rectum valve is developed using an SMA plate as the actuator. At body temperature, the SMA plate takes an arc shape, and the valve closes the rectum by the force of a bias spring. When the SMA plate is heated by the electric current that flows through the nichrome wire to the plate, it recovers its original flat shape, and then opens the valve to enable the evacuations. The motion characteristic is studied from preliminary experiments, which confirms that the valve closes at the body temperature and opens when the SMA plate is heated. Furthermore, to verify the function of the artificial rectum valve as an anal sphincter, in vivo animal experiments were conducted using dogs. The experiments verify that this rectum valve works well as an artificial and sphincter.
