Tribocorrosion Behaviour of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy in Biomedical Implant

What is it about?

Tribocorrosion covers the science of surface transformations resulting from the interaction of mechanical loading and chemical reactions that occur between elements of a tribosystem exposed to corrosive environments. An important subset of tribocorrosion is fretting corrosion. Implant materials are subjected to the relative movements, which can cause wear damage, together with the corrosive attack of the body fluids. This combined action, being estimated that in hip implant systems. Ti alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) has been widely used. Due to their superior biocompatibility and excellent corrosion resistance and good mechanical properties. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the fretting corrosion of Ti-6Al-4V alloy under different load and surfaces roughness. The fretting corrosion tests of Ti-6Al-4V alloy were performed using pin on disc tests at phosphate buffer saline solution (PBS), under different loading (0.5- 25) N and different surfaces roughness (240, 320, 400, 600) μm. The effect of fretting corrosion on, surface morphology, chemical composition and fretting corrosion resistance studied by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) and Tafel potential polarization. The result indicate, when increasing contact load, the smoother surfaces 600 μm give lower average current density when comparable with others surface roughness (320, 240, 400) μm. The damage on the smooth surface is more than on the rough surface. The fretting currents dependent upon surface roughness with smoother surfaces producing lower fretting currents.

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Photo by Justin Schüler on Unsplash

Photo by Justin Schüler on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of variation applied load due to human activities and surface roughness conditions on the fretting corrosion of Ti-6Al-4V alloy in biomedical application.

Perspectives