Porous NiTi shape memory alloy is of special interest for biomedical purposes especially for human bones application due to its attractive features such as lower stiffness to minimize the effect of stress shielding and good strength to prevent deformation and fracture apart from its shape memory effect and superelastic behavior. With all these great benefits, however, the challenge is to produce porous NiTi which resembles cancellous bone. Therefore, in this research, pore forming agent such as calcium hydride, CaH2, is added to the equiatomic of Ni and TiH2 powder mixture to produce porous NiTi with higher porosity level using powder metallurgy technique. Here, the effect of composition of pore forming agent on porosity level, phase formation and transformation behaviour of porous NiTi were investigated. From the observation, the pores formation exhibits small closed pores instead of interconnected pores. The result also shows that by adding 3wt% composition of pore forming agent, the porosity level of sample sintered can reach up to 32%. For phase transformation behavior, there are martensitic transformation peaks observed both upon cooling and heating for all samples, however the overall enthalpy changes are significantly lower (<2 J/g). This due to undesirable phase such NiTi2, Ni-rich phase and also Ni3Ti that co-exist with NiTi formation, thus jeopardize the transformation enthalpy for porous NiTi.

This paper presents the study of carbon powder as additive in near-net-shaping of mechanical components through warm forming route. Three design parameters, i.e., carbon content (wt %), forming temperature, and sintering schedule were investigated. Iron powder ASC 100.29 was mechanically mixed with different wt% of carbon and copper powder for 30 minutes to prepare the feedstock. Green compacts were then formed through uni-axial die compaction process at 30°C and 180oC. The defect-free green compacts were then sintered at 1000oC in an argon gas fired furnace at a heating/cooling rate of 5oC/minute for 30, 60, and 90 minutes, respectively. The green samples as well the sintered products were characterized through relative density measurement, radial shrinkage, and microstructure evaluation. The results revealed that excessive carbon content contributed adverse effect to the final quality of the products.

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