Numerical Simulation and Experimental Study of Porous Titanium Implants under Compressive Loading Conditions

In this paper, bulk and porous Ti-6Al-4V structures were designed based on the Voronoi diagram and fabricated by the powder bed diffusion method. Evaluations were done on the irregular porous structures with different porous thicknesses of 0.5-1.5 mm through experimental and simulation methods. A scanning electron microscope was used to investigate the microstructure and morphology of the pores with prior chemical etching. The morphological evaluation showed the pore structures were similar to spongy bone and the pore diameters were in the range of 520-910 mu m. Primary and secondary alpha ' grains were observed because of special heat treatment during the production of the samples. Mechanical investigation showed that a decrease of at least 40% in Young's modulus was observed by increasing the porous part thickness. Analysis of variance for compression diagrams showed p value between all simulation and experimental groups is more than 0.327 and there was no significant difference between the diagrams. Simulation and experimental observation also showed that samples failed at a 45 degrees inclination angle relative to the compression test direction.