Abstract
Recently, shape memory alloy(SMA) has been marked as material of the actuator for micro-mechanism system. It is well known that the sheet of the material has higher sensitivity to temperature change than wire or bulk materials, advantageous as the material for microactuator. However, the study on the characteristics of the sheet against temperature has not been conducted very much yet. Then this paper deals with the heating performance of the sheet by a new method. In this method, a pulse width modulated electric current was used to heat the sheet material and the heating performance of the method was evaluated by analyzing temperature distribution of the sheet. The temperature of the sheet was measured by the usage of infrared temperature. The results showed that the temperature distribution is homogeneous throughout the surface of the sheet indicating practical applicability of the method to a microactuator system with the SMA sheet.
