Study on energy absorbing composite structure made of concentric NiTi spring and porous NiTi

An energy absorbing composite structure made of a concentric NiTi spring and a porous NiTi rod is investigated in this paper. Both NiTi spring and porous NiTi rod are of superelastic grade. Ductile porous NiTi cylindrical specimens are fabricated by spark plasma sintering. The composite structure exhibits not only high reversible force–displacement relation for small to intermediate loading but also high energy absorbing property when subjected to large compressive load. A model for the compressive force–displacement curve of the composite structure is presented. The predicted curve is compared to the experimental data, resulting in a reasonably good agreement.