Introduction of Compressive Residual Stress by Means of Cavitation Peening into a Titanium Alloy Rod Used for Spinal Implants

Abstract

The introduction of compressive residual stress is an effective way to reduce fretting fatigue and fretting wear between a spinal implant rod and its holding fixture. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that cavitation peening can introduce compressive residual stress into the surface of a spinal implant rod manufactured from medical grade titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V, which has already been processed by glass shot peening. In order to apply the cavitation peening for the small rod, whose diameter is only 5.5 mm, the cavitating region was concentrated by increasing the ambient pressure. The depth profiles of the resulting residual stress were evaluated by X-ray diffraction following layer removal by electropolishing. The results show that cavitation peening creates compressive residual stress deeper into the rod, even though the stress value at the near surface is saturated due to initial processing using glass shot peening. The depth of the compressive residual stress continuously increases from 44 μm to 230 μm with an increase in the cavitation peening processing time. In addition, the full width at half maximum value of the X-ray diffraction profile, which is closely related to the micro-strain, decreases by up to 32% following the application of cavitation peening.