Failure behavior of plasma-sprayed HAp coating on commercially pure titanium substrate in simulated body fluid (SBF) under bending load

Four point bending tests with acoustic emission (AE) monitoring were conducted for evaluating failure behavior of the plasma-sprayed hydroxyapatite (HAp) top coat on commercially pure titanium (cp-Ti) plate with and without mixed HAp/Ti bond coat. Effect of immersion in simulated body fluid (SBF) on failure behavior of the coated specimen was also investigated by immersing the specimen in SBF. The AE patterns obtained from the bending test of the HAp coating specimens after a week immersion in SBF clearly showed the earlier stage of delamination and spallation of the coating layer compared to those without immersion in SBF. It was also found that the bond coating improved failure resistance of the HAp coating specimen compared to that without the bond coat. Four point bend fatigue tests under ambient and SBF environments were also conducted with AE monitoring during the entire fatigue test for investigating the influence of SBF environment on fatigue failure behavior of the HAp coating specimen with the mixed HAp/Ti bond coat. The specimens tested at a stress amplitude of 120 MPa under both ambient and SBF environments could survive up to 107 cycles without spallation of HAp coating layer. The specimens tested under SBF environment and those tested under ambient environment after immersion in SBF showed shorter fatigue life compared to those tested under ambient environment without SBF immersion. Micro-cracks nucleated in the coating layer in the early stage of fatigue life and then propagated into the cp-Ti substrate in the intermediate stage, which unstably propagated to failure in the final stage. It was found from the XRD analysis that the dissolution of the co-existing phases and the precipitation of the HAp phase were taken place during immersion in SBF. During this process, the co-existing phases disappeared from the coating layer and the HAp phase fully occupied the coating layer. The degradation of bending strength and fatigue life of the HAp coating specimens tested under SBF environment would be induced by dissolution of the co-existing phases from the coating layer during immersion in SBF.