Surface characteristics study of Ti-6Al-4V alloy for biomedical applications using finite element modeling

The Ti-6Al-4V alloy, due to its low elastic modulus and outstanding biocompatibility, is extensively used in the field of biomedical. Nevertheless, their surface properties deteriorate with the conventional machining methods because of cutting forces, and residual stresses, and thus, non-conventional methods are employed.This paper investigates the surface characteristics study of Ti-6Al-4V alloy in terms of material removal rate (MRR), crater formation, and temperature distribution using finite element modeling (FEM) based novel multi-spark simulation with the electrochemical discharge phenomena. Subsequently, the predicted results are validated through machining and observed to be in consensus with the experimental results. The plots of temperature distributions are studied and inspected for evaluating the crater formation, crater depth, and MRR in Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The formation of the crater and the material removed indicates the possibility of retaining surface properties of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy with non-conventional electrochemical discharge phenomena. The machined surface is analyzed using FESEM to study the microstructural analysis.