Fretting Wear Resistance of Titanium Foam Developed by Powder Metallurgy Route

Abstract

Titanium foam is a promising material for bio-implant application because of its capability of minimizing the stress shielding effect at the interface between implant and host bone, in addition to its higher strength and weight ratio and shock absorbing capacity as compared to solid titanium and its alloys. In the present study, titanium foam has been developed by powder metallurgy route under optimum processing conditions with and without addition of cenosphere as space holder. Followed by the development of titanium foam (with and without addition of cenosphere), characterization and fretting wear behavior (kinetics and mechanism) has been studied using tungsten carbide as counter body. A detailed study of wear behavior shows that there is a significant decrease in wear rate due to fretting wear in porous titanium with 20 wt% cenosphere addition as compared to as received Ti6Al4V, porous titanium with 10 wt% cenosphere and without cenosphere. Coefficient of friction was also found to be reduced in porous titanium with cenosphere addition and 10 wt% cenosphere added titanium showed a maximum reduction in coefficient of friction. The mechanism of wear was found to vary with cenosphere content in the matrix.