Abstract
Even if titanium alloys are widely used for biomedical applications, the tendency they show to wear is a matter of concern for their durability. In this research work, Ultrasonic Vibration Turning (UVT) was used to generate texturized surfaces on Ti6Al4V cylinders for improving their wear performances. To prove that, in vitro wear tests were performed, during which the UVT-ed Ti6Al4V cylinders were made to slide against polyethylene disks to replicate a currently used biomedical pair. It was shown that the UVT-ed Ti6Al4V cylinders were characterized by enhanced performances in terms of coefficient of friction and wear rate, which were reduced to 52 and 25%, respectively, compared to polished Ti6Al4V surfaces.
Highlights
Ti6Al4V titanium alloy is widely used for biomedical applications because of its excellent combination of high strength, low density, and corrosion resistance
The obtained results show that the contact angle was not affected by different surface topographies; it can be stated that Ultrasonic Vibration Turning (UVT) did not alter the Ti6Al4V wettability characteristics
The effect of surface texturing on the wear performances of the Ti6Al4V-UHMPE pair was evaluated
Summary
Ti6Al4V titanium alloy is widely used for biomedical applications because of its excellent combination of high strength, low density, and corrosion resistance. Several approaches have been applied for this aim, among which it is worth citing thermal oxidation (Ref 3) and treatments (Ref 4), coatings (Ref 5), mechanically based methods (Ref 6), and more lately grafting (Ref 7) The latter technique deals with the modification of bearing surfaces with a hydrophilic polymer layer possessing a brush-like structure, assumed to be similar to that of the articular cartilages. Laser texturing represents the most adopted process for texturing; it uses localized melt and vaporization of the material, to form individual rounded dimple depressions (Ref 20) This method, besides needing a laser and optical systems that are costly and require clean environments, induces on the worked surface a thermally affected zone usually associated with white layer formation, which impairs the mechanical characteristics of the surface itself. Results were compared with the ones obtained by using Ti6Al4V smooth surfaces, which represent the baseline for comparison
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