Topological design and high-performance additive manufacturing of porous femoral implants

Abstract

The use of porous implants can successfully address the issues of stress shielding and sterile loosening associated with the use of solid implants in the human body. Implant structures can be designed and produced using topology optimization (TOP) and selective laser melting (SLM). In this paper, a unit-optimized structure with better mechanical properties is obtained by topology optimization as the femoral implant constitutive unit. The orthogonal experiment is used to optimize the process parameters of SLM molding Ti-6Al-4 V material to determine the optimal process parameters based on the judging criterion of density. Finally, the SLM technique is used to mold the optimized porous femoral implants. The results of the above study are found as follows: The volume fraction of the optimized cell structure is effectively reduced to 30%, effectively solving the stress shielding problem. Based on the optimal process parameters, the surface of the SLM molded porous femoral implant is clear, with good connection to adjacent unit structures and no overhang on the surface, indicating good molding quality. The application of high-performance porous femoral implants is made possible by this work.