Smart materials have made a substantial contribution to their widespread use across a number of industries. Numerous intelligent materials have the ability to alter their characteristics and behavior in response to an outside catalyst or stimulus. These materials are altering how typical engineering materials are used. To improve the desirable features of existing materials, smart materials can either be used alone or combined with them. Due to its transdisciplinary uses, smart materials are found in all human innovations. While some of these materials are in use now, some have been for a very long time. Therefore, suffice it to remark that further study is still needed on the recently produced smart materials. The development of composite materials to shape memory alloys is the subject of this review study. This literature describes the development of smart materials from traditional composites to cutting-edge shape memory alloys as well as how they are utilized.
Top1. Introduction
Materials have been utilized by humans since very long time for a variety of purposes to make daily life more comfortable. From stone age to the current world, materials have undergone technological improvements. One of the major discoveries in the science of metallurgy that enabled people since ancient times discover more advanced materials was bronze. Technology was essential in the synthesis and characterization of more sophisticated materials, known as smart materials, which are now becoming very commonplace. Smart materials are also referred to as intelligent materials, because their capacity to sense stimuli and respond to them improves the performance of materials. Materials like these can change the essential structure, performance, sturdiness, and weight. Metals, ceramics, polymers, and smart materials are the four main classifications of materials. When an external force is applied, these materials have a propensity to change size and shape. Some of them exhibit self-healing and self-destructive qualities that are extraordinary compared to those of ordinary materials and influence society. These materials have a propensity to adapt to changing environmental circumstances.
Based on their qualities, smart materials are divided into both passive and active materials, as shown in Figure 1. Active smart materials are those that can change one type of energy into another while remaining impermeable to the outside environment, as opposed to passive smart materials, which can merely change or transform energy. Active materials are self-diagnostics because of their quick form and size changes and reduced time to response, self-actuation, and increased exposure to external stimuli. Self-diagnostics, often known as self-healing properties, enable them to detect surface cracks and autonomously repair them. Multifunctional materials are being discovered recently, and their properties have been examined using a variety of characterization approaches. Materials have evolved, through composites to smart memory alloys. These advanced materials have transcended normal materials, and current procedures have been used to create them instead of older, more traditional methods (Kim, 2017), (Hu, 2016), (Kamila, 2013), (Swait, et al., 2012), (Roytburd et al., 2000), (Dolez & Mlynarek, 2016) and (Ajay et al., 2023).
These contemporary materials are self-adaptive and have a memory function that mimics the human brain and alters the characteristics of the material to the past after it has been changed in accordance with the surroundings. These materials are widely used in the creation of products related to the environment, civil infrastructure, and the health sector. Since the environment outside controls these materials, they have an inherent sensor, an actuator, plus a control mechanism built right in to help them react to their surroundings. In other words, going back to how it was. One class of intelligent material is piezoelectric, which generates voltages in response to stress. Due of their mechanical and physical characteristics, composites have recently played an unprecedented role. Amongst, its many qualities are excellent wear resistance, resistant to corrosion and exposure to elevated temperatures. Due to their fabrication techniques, the manufacturing cost was decreased even though they had a high scattering strength and low thermal shock resistance. In the production of various components like breaks, tanks, shafts, and vessels, as well as in processes requiring high wear resistance in the onshore oil production, marine structures, shipping, and health sectors, composites have played a significant role in the aerospace, automotive, machine, and thermal industries. Wood, bones, shells, and other naturally occurring composites are a few examples. These typical composites have a number of flaws, including the inability to react to external stimuli, which prevents them from having self-healing, crack detection, and shape memory capabilities. Smart materials were developed to address these shortcomings. Smart materials include smart composites, shape memory alloys, piezoelectric materials, magnetorheological fluids, magnetostrictive materials, and optical fibres, but shape memory alloys were a major engineering breakthrough that had a positive impact on many societal sector(Bearat & Vernon, 2011), (Du et al., 2011), (Drossel et al., 2015) and (Bahl et al., 2015).