Characterization of mechanical and microstructural properties of constrained groove pressed nitinol shape memory alloy for biomedical applications

Among shape memory alloys, nitinol alloy is biocompatible in nature and thus widely used in bone tissue engineering, stents, dental and orthopedic implants. To improve mechanical properties and extend its application window, in this paper, the Ni50.5Ti49.5 (nitinol) sheets are processed by constrained groove pressing (CGP) process, which is one of the effective severe plastic deformation (SPD) techniques for refining microstructure and enhancing mechanical properties in sheet metals. The microstructure and X-ray diffraction studies of CGPed sheets show uniform grain refinement and increase in martensitic variant. Based on tensile and microhardness tests on water quenched (WQ) and CGPed nitinol alloy, the results show about up to 2.5 times increment in ultimate tensile strength and yield strength, significant enhancement in microhardness and change in strain hardening behavior. For characterizing the strain hardening behavior, Holloman and Voce models have been determined to have strong correlation with the experimental data for WQ and CGPed nitinol alloy respectively. Thus, nitinol alloy after CGP exhibits grain refinement and microstructural evolution, showing an increase in stress induced martensite phase which indicates superior mechanical properties such as high strength, uniform deformation regime and microhardness. These enhancements will help in reduction of other supporting materials generally used for improving structural integrity and load bearing capacity in biomedical applications of nitinol alloy.