Explore the vast range of titles available.

In this article, design and finite element simulation of porous Ti-6Al-4V alloy structures was presented. Typically, titanium and titanium alloy implants can be manufactured with required pore size and porosity volume by using powder bed fusion techniques due to advancement in additive manufacturing technologies. However, the mismatch of elastic modulus between human cortical bone and the dense Ti-6Al-4V alloy implant resulted in stress shielding which accelerate the implant failure. The porous implant structures help in reduce the mismatch of elastic modulus between the cortical bone and implant structure and also improve the bone ingrowth. Hence, the present work focuses on design of Ti-6Al-4V alloy porous structures with various porosities ranging from 10% to 70% and simulated to determine the elastic modulus suitable for human cortical bone. The sample with 45% porosity is found to be best suited for replacement of cortical bone with elastic modulus of 74Gpa, preventing stress shielding effect and enhanced chances of bone ingrowth.

Determining the quality of Ti-6Al-4V parts fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) remains a challenge due to the high cost of SLM and the need for expertise in processes and materials. In order to understand the correspondence of the relative density of SLMed Ti-6Al-4V parts with process parameters, an optimized extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) decision tree model was developed in the present paper using hyperparameter optimization with the GridsearchCV method. In particular, the effect of the size of the dataset for model training and testing on model prediction accuracy was examined. The results show that with the reduction in dataset size, the prediction accuracy of the proposed model decreases, but the overall accuracy can be maintained within a relatively high accuracy range, showing good agreement with the experimental results. Based on a small dataset, the prediction accuracy of the optimized XGBoost model was also compared with that of artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) models, and it was found that the optimized XGBoost model has better evaluation indicators such as mean absolute error, root mean square error, and the coefficient of determination. In addition, the optimized XGBoost model can be easily extended to the prediction of mechanical properties of more metal materials manufactured by SLM processes.

The high specific strength, good corrosion resistance, and great biocompatibility make titanium and its alloys the ideal materials for biomedical metallic implants. Ti-6Al-4V alloy is the most employed in practical biomedical applications because of the excellent combination of strength, fracture toughness, and corrosion resistance. However, recent studies have demonstrated some limits in biocompatibility due to the presence of toxic Al and V. Consequently, scientific literature has reported novel biomedical β-Ti alloys containing biocompatible β-stabilizers (such as Mo, Ta, and Zr) studying the possibility to obtain similar performances to the Ti-6Al-4V alloys. The aim of this review is to highlight the corrosion resistance of the passive layers on biomedical Ti-6Al-4V and β-type Ti alloys in the human body environment by reviewing relevant literature research contributions. The discussion is focused on all those factors that influence the performance of the passive layer at the surface of the alloy subjected to electrochemical corrosion, among which the alloy composition, the method selected to grow the oxide coating, and the physicochemical conditions of the body fluid are the most significant.

Selective laser melting (SLM) enables the manufacture of lattice structures with highly engineered mechanical properties that are optimised for the associated design requirements. Such lattice structures offer high specific strength and stiffness characteristics allowing design freedom beyond the capacity of solid materials. However, to apply lattices as space filling structural elements, it is necessary to quantify their mechanical properties such as compressive strength and stiffness under varying geometric conditions. This work provides an experimental investigation of the manufacturability of SLM Ti-6Al-4V lattice struts of varying diameter and inclination. From this investigation, lattice structures are manufactured for varying cell topology, cell size, number of unit cells and associated boundary conditions. The deformation and failure behaviour of these lattices is theoretically predicted and experimentally validated. The convergence of mechanical properties with increasing number of unit cells, as well as the effect of lattice topology on mechanical behaviour and observed failures mode are reported.

In the present work, sheet-forming processes, i.e. super plastic forming and single-point incremental forming, have been adopted for the manufacturing of custom prostheses, instead of subtractive and additive techniques that are time- and cost-consuming for a single-piece production. Regarding concerns of the material, three different titanium alloys were used: pure titanium and two grades of the alloy Ti-6Al-4V (the standard one and the extra low interstitial one). Since no standard protocol exists to assess the mechanical performance of cranial implants, an experimental procedure has been designed and used in this work for producing polymethylmethacrylate supports, on which the cranial prostheses were firmly connected and subjected to impact puncture tests (drop tests). An experimental campaign could thus be conducted to investigate the effect on the mechanical response of (a) the titanium alloy, (b) the initial blank thickness and (c) the manufacturing process. Drop tests, carried out according to the proposed procedure, have shown no failure of the prostheses, neither in the area of the impact nor in the anchoring region and have revealed that, irrespective of the adopted manufacturing process, which does not alter the material, the amount of energy absorbed by the implants is always larger than 70%.

Machining-induced damages encountered during the grinding of titanium alloys are a major setback for processing different components from these materials. Recent studies have shown that nanofluid (NF)-based minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) systems improved the machining lubrication and the titanium alloys' machinability. In this work, the tribological characteristics of a palm oil-based tripartite hybrid NF (ZnO/Al 2O 3/Graphene Oxide, GO) are studied. The novel usage of the developed lubricants in MQL systems was examined during the grinding of Ti6-Al-4V (TC4) alloy. The NF was produced by mixing three weight percent mixtures (i.e., 0.1, 0.5, and 1 wt.%) of the nanoparticles in palm oil. A comprehensive tribological and physical investigation was conducted on different percentage compositions of the developed NF to determine the optimum mix ratio of the lubricant. The findings indicate that increasing the NF concentration caused an increment in the dynamic viscosity and frictional coefficient of the NFs. The tripartite hybrid NF exhibited superior tribological and physicochemical properties compared with the pure palm and monotype-based NFs. Moreover, the dynamic viscosity of the tripartite-hybrid-based NFs increased by 12%, 5%, and 11.5% for the Al 2O 3, GO, and ZnO hybrid NFs, respectively. In addition, the machining results indicate that the tripartite hybrid NF lowered the surface roughness, specific grinding, grinding force ratio, tangential, and normal grinding forces by 42%, 40%, 16.5%, 41.5%, and 30%, respectively. Hence, the tripartite hybrid NFs remarkably enhanced the tribology and machining performance of the eco-friendly lubricant.

Titanium has been one of the traditional metals used in the medical industry since 1940. This work modeled and simulated a hip-joint replacement implant using Creo 5.0 and DEFORM 3D (v11.0), respectively. Four titanium-based billets were modeled; out of four billets, three billets were coated with a specified thickness, and one was uncoated. Among the three coated billets, one billet was coated with a 500-micron and two billets coated with a 1000-micron thickness. At the end of the simulation, the coating materials formed patches on the surface of the forged parts. The coating material Ti-6Al-4V (high O2) produced excellent mechanical properties in contrast to the CP-Ti material, which displayed low mechanical properties and did not match the core property. Hence, it was suggested to provide a bulk coating of Ti-6Al-4V (high O2) on the billet to improve the physio-mechanical properties and biocompatibility. Four points were selected on the surface of the forged parts at different locations for identifying the property variations concerning forging time. Results found that coating thickness required more on the side surface of the billet material than on the upper and lower surfaces to enhance its properties.

In this study, TiB + La2O3/Ti-6Al-4V composites were successfully prepared by in situ reaction using selective laser melting technology. The effect of LaB6 content on the fabrication quality, microstructure evolution and mechanical properties of the composite samples was investigated. The results show that the relative density of the sample gradually decreased from 98.56% to 96.57% as LaB6 content increased from 0 wt% to 3 wt%. With increasing LaB6 content, TiB precipitates gradually aggregated and grew from a discrete needle-like structure to a dendritic structure, before eventually developing a cell-like structure. The dislocations piled up around the TiB and La2O3 reinforcements, which impeded the motion of the dislocations and led to the enhancement of the tensile strength of the samples. Different from the addition of a single reinforcement due to the combined strengthening effect of the micrometer-scale and nanoscale reinforcements, the strength of the samples was increased significantly. The Ti-6Al-4V sample with 3 wt% LaB6 addition showed the most significant strengthening effect. Compared to the pure Ti-6Al-4V sample, the 3 wt% LaB6 addition sample gained a 35.71% increase in hardness and a 14.5% increase in tensile strength. Additionally, wear volume was reduced by 47.5%. The results revealed that the addition of LaB6 was a potential way to improve the mechanical performance of the titanium alloys in the additive manufacturing process.

Selective laser melting involves melting and solidification of metal powder particles in a track-by-track and layer-by-layer method to fabricate 3D parts. The present investigation focuses on understanding the effect of laser power and scan speed on the evolution of melt pool, porosity and multiple thermal cycling effects on the microstructure in parts fabricated using selective laser melting. In this study, Ti-6Al-4V pre-alloyed powder was used to produce single-track deposits and bulk parts. Using different combinations of laser power and scan speeds, single-track deposits and bulk parts were produced. The cross-sections of the single-track deposits and bulk samples were prepared for metallographic observations and the melt pool shape and size and porosity were evaluated. When a low energy density was applied the un-melted powder particles produced irregularly shaped porosity, and a high energy density resulted in rounded porosity, which was due to keyhole effects. The samples produced with a proper combination of power and speeds were fully dense. Further, microstructural development under the influence of process condition was highlighted. Overall, the study demonstrates a good correlation between the single-track melt pool geometries, porosity in bulk parts and also demonstrates the microstructural inhomogeneity during deposition.

Ti-6Al-4V bridges were additively fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) under different scanning speed conditions, to compare the effect of process energy density on the residual stress state. Subsurface lattice strain characterization was conducted by means of synchrotron diffraction in energy dispersive mode. High tensile strain gradients were found at the frontal surface for samples in an as-built condition. The geometry of the samples promotes increasing strains towards the pillar of the bridges. We observed that the higher the laser energy density during fabrication, the lower the lattice strains. A relief of lattice strains takes place after heat treatment.