Non‐Conventional Fatigue Testing of CP Titanium for Medical Implants

Abstract

A major requirement on Ti-based surgical implants is high fatigue strength. In the present work it has been demonstrated that nanostructuring by equal channel angular pressing results in a marked improvement of the fatigue performance of CP Ti, leading to levels of fatigue strength that are on par with that of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The fatigue strength under conventional load control tension-compression testing was more than doubled. In addition, an implant is exposed to cyclic loading and its fatigue endurance may be compromised by corrosive bodily fluids. In this work non-conventional fatigue testing (bending-unbending of plate-shaped specimens) in air and in simulated body fluid has been carried out for coarse grained and ultrafine grained CP titanium. The outcomes of the study will be presented vis-à-vis results of conventional tension-compression fatigue testing of CP titanium.