The Effect of Cooling Strategies and Machining Feed Rate on the Corrosion Behavior and Wettability of AZ31 Alloy for Biomedical Applications

In this work, the corrosion rate of the AZ31 magnesium alloy in physiological environment was improved by optimized machining process parameters. Cryogenic turning was exploited to obtain a featureless layer in the machined sub-surface, while the feed rate was modified to reduce the aspect ratio of the feed marks characteristic of the turning operation, achieving a decrease of the alloy wettability. The obtained results showed that the aforementioned combined aspects acted as an efficient strategy to enhance the AZ31 poor corrosion behavior, which represents the major obstacle of its effective application in the biomedical field.