Fatigue testing of electron beam-melted Ti-6Al-4V ELI alloy for dental implants.
Customized one-component dental implants have been fabricated using Electron Beam Melting(®) (EBM(®)), which is a rapid prototyping and manufacturing technique. The goal of our study was to determine the effect of electron beam orientation on the fatigue resistance of EBM Ti-6Al-4V ELI alloy. EBM technique was used to fabricate Ti-6Al-4V ELI alloy blocks, which were cut into rectangular beam specimens with dimensions of 25 × 4 × 3 mm, such that electron beam orientation was either parallel (group A) or perpendicular (group B) to the long axis of the specimens. The specimens were subjected to cyclic fatigue (R = 0.1) in four-point flexure under ambient conditions using various stress amplitudes below the yield stress. The fatigue lifetime data were fit to an inverse power law-Weibull model to predict the peak stress corresponding to failure probabilities of 5 and 63% at 2M cycles (σ(max, 5%) and σ(max, 63%)). Groups A and B did not have significantly different Weibull modulus, m (p > 0.05). The specimens with parallel orientation showed significantly higher σ(max, 63%) (p ≤ 0.05), but there was no significant difference in the σ(max, 5%) (p > 0.05). Thus, it can be concluded that the fatigue resistance of the material was greatest when the electron beam orientation was perpendicular to the direction of crack propagation.
Department of Biomedical Materials Science, School of Dentistry, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA.
Gaurav V
GV
Joshi
Yuanyuan
Y
Duan
John
J
Neidigh
Mari
M
Koike
Gilbert
G
Chahine
Radovan
R
Kovacevic
Toru
T
Okabe
Jason A
JA
Griggs
D000497:Alloys; D015921:Dental Implants; D004583:Electrons; D008422:Materials Testing; D013718:Tensile Strength; D014025:Titanium
D000497:Alloys; D015921:Dental Implants; C031462:titanium alloy (TiAl6V4); D014025:Titanium