Determination of the Young’s modulus of porous ß-type Ti–40Nb by finite element analysis

•Porous Ti–40Nb alloy with very low stiffness was produced by powder sintering.•NaCl space holder result in interconnected 50–60% porosity as confirmed by μCT study.•Young’s moduli of macroporous sample was calculated by finite element analysis.•The calculated and experimentally obtained values were similar within small error.

Macroporous ß-type Ti–40Nb compacts with particularly low stiffness suitable for biomedical applications were successfully processed by a space-holder sintering method with a total porosity range of 50–60%. The microstructure of these samples as well as their phase composition and their mechanical properties were carefully analyzed. The samples comprise macropores with 100–300 μm size formed by NaCl space-holder particles and micropores of 1–3 μm size within the sintered Ti–Nb alloy. The correlation between the mesoscopic Young’s modulus and the microporosity of the alloy was analyzed by combining compression tests, microcomputer tomography (μCT), and finite element analysis (FE). The derived relationship permits to predict the macroscopic Young’s modulus of macroporous compacts for a known morphology of the macroporosity.