Nitinol Devices & Components

Advanced Simulation and Consulting Services

Nitinol's biocompatibility has made it a versatile material for many medical applications. It is used for dentures, needles, heart valve instruments, and minimally invasive surgical instruments, to name a few. Nitinol possesses highly attractive but complex mechanical behavior which has limited the amount of engineering evaluation performed to date.

Nitinol Devices & Components (NDC, a J&J company) is a leading supplier of superelastic and shape memory Nitinol alloys. Working closely with NDC, SIMULIA developed a customized material user subroutine using the Abaqus FEA product suite to simulate the mechanical behavior of Nitinol. This allowed medical researchers to conduct "what-if" design studies to predict stent fatigue life as a function of design geometry and ultimately achieve FDA approval with regard to product life.