Lagoudas model for optomechanical mountings: Parametric study and characterization campaign

This paper is a study on the numerical modeling and the accordance between model and experiment of the behavior of Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) used as functional devices for application in Instrumentations for Astronomy. Some NiTi alloy samples was characterized using different experimental techniques, with the purpose of obtaining the material parameters, necessary to evaluate the correspondence between the simulation and the experimental behavior of the materials. The sensibility of the computational model to the variation of this parameters for the materials was investigated as well. Opto-mechanical mounting with pseudoelastic kinematic behavior and damping of launch loads onto optical elements are feasible applications that are investigated in this paper. The practical realization of a scaled down prototype is described. The device was thought for ground-based applications and made up of four small flexures that support an optical component and was designed and modeled in order to be able to evaluate the mechanical effects of different materials. The results of numerical modeling was compared to the data obtained from the prototype. We obtained a first evaluation of the development, selection and processing of NiTi-based supports for optomechanical applications and verified the performances of a complete system as a respect to an analogous system made up using traditional materials like steels. © 2013 SPIE.