A comparison of axial fatigue strength of coarse and ultrafine grain commercially pure titanium produced by ECAP

Commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) has been recently used as metallic biomaterials due to excellent biocompatibility and specific strength. CP-Ti has less static and dynamic strength as compared to other metallic biomaterials. Processing by the equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) as one of the most effective severe plastic deformation (SPD) method could lead to an increase in the mechanical strength of materials, significantly. In this study, Grade 2 CP-Ti billet is inserted into Al-7075 casing, and is then deformed by ECAP, with the channel angle of 135°, through 3 passes at route BC and room temperature. The purpose of using casing is to attain higher deformation homogeneity and more material ductility in the billet. The microstructural analysis shows that the coarse grain (CG) CP-Ti is developed to ultra-fine grain (UFG) structures after ECAP. In order to investigate the static and dynamic strength of CG and UFG CP-Ti, the tensile and axial fatigue tests are conducted. The results represent that UFG CP-Ti has much more tensile and fatigue strength than CG CP-Ti, and it could be utilized as biomaterials for production of implants. Surface features of fatigue fracture are also investigated. It should be noted that the investigation of fatigue strength of UFG CP-Ti produced by ECAP at RT utilizing casing, has not been conducted so far.