Improving the fatigue behavior of dental implants through processing commercial purity titanium by equal-channel angular pressing

An investigation was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of using commercial purity (CP) titanium of grade 1 for dental implants after processing by equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP). The material was processed by ECAP for 4 passes at room temperature. Dental implants were machined from the unprocessed material and the material processed by ECAP and their mechanical properties were evaluated in tensile and compression testing and in fatigue using the conditions specified in the ISO 14801 standard for dental implants. The results show processing by ECAP increases the yield stress and the ultimate tensile stress but reduces the strain hardening rate and hence the overall elongation to failure. Although processing by ECAP increases the fatigue life using cyclic bending loads, a comparison with published data suggests the fatigue behavior CP Ti of grade 1 is slightly less satisfactory than for commercial implants fabricated from higher grade titanium alloys.