NiTinol is a Shape Memory Alloy of particular interest for the design of smart structures thanks to its functional properties. However, the limited machinability of this material and the difficulty of producing complex structures with traditional technologies considerably reduce the possible applications of NiTi. Selective Laser Melting, and Additive Manufacturing technologies in general, allow to overcome this problem by producing complex structures layer by layer.

NiTi is characterized by two effects: Shape Memory Effect and Pseudoelastic Effect. In particular, the latter allows the material to recover large deformations, and combining this property with the possibility of realising non-traditional geometries can be useful in fields such as aerospace and biomedical ones. In this work, the pseudoelastic effect of NiTi is used for damping applications by designing a plate composed by individual octahedral cells whose geometry was optimised to improve the material's functionality.

The work started with the study of the individual thermal treated cell. These structures were characterised through DSC measurements, to define the transformation temperatures of the material, microscope observations of the samples, and mechanical tests, both in static and dynamic conditions. Following the characterisation of the single cell, the analysis of a prototype plate was carried out by combining several elements and observing the response of the structure in terms of damping capacity.

Both the cell and the plate were studied experimentally and with finite element analyses implemented on Abaqus using the Auricchio model to characterise the material. The numerical results allow to define the number and configuration of the single cells inside the plate prototype.