While an essentially hysteresis-free shape memory effect sounds exciting, the strains produced by the austenite-R transformation are too small for most applications. Because of the very small hysteresis, and the tremendous cyclic stability of the A-R transformation, some effort has been made to commercialize thermal actuators based on the effect.. Such applications have been of limited success at best. For most of Nitinol applications, the R-phase is an annoyance and engineers try to suppress its appearance. Some of the difficulties it induces are as follows:
