SMA valve

From gardening to agriculture, the responsible use of increasingly limited water resources is becoming more and more important. Micro or drip irrigation systems have become established in commercial agriculture. In these systems, outlets are attached to hoses at regular intervals, which continuously release a small amount of water. However, on strong gradients (e.g. in viticulture or vertical farming), the amount of water released differs considerably. It is therefore not possible to achieve demand-oriented or at least uniform irrigation with this principle.

In contrast, there are approaches to optimize the supply of the plants with the help of sensors or optical processes. The valves that are available on the market for this purpose are mostly based on electromagnets and are therefore too large, too inefficient or too expensive, especially for drip irrigation. Furthermore, all available valves have in common that they only have one preferred switching state (open / closed) and cannot maintain the other state (closed / open) without energy supply.

With SMA, an actuator principle is available with which particularly simple, small, low-noise and energy-efficient valves can be realized. The combination of SMA actuators and bistable mechanics also enables sequential switching of the switching states with just one actuator. The valve developed and patented with this approach closes a significant gap in the field of irrigation systems and thus makes it possible to increase the efficiency of irrigation systems with simple means.