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Experimental investigation of the mechanical performances of titanium cranial prostheses manufactured by super plastic forming and single-point incremental forming

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Abstract

In the present work, sheet-forming processes, i.e. super plastic forming and single-point incremental forming, have been adopted for the manufacturing of custom prostheses, instead of subtractive and additive techniques that are time- and cost-consuming for a single-piece production. Regarding concerns of the material, three different titanium alloys were used: pure titanium and two grades of the alloy Ti-6Al-4V (the standard one and the extra low interstitial one). Since no standard protocol exists to assess the mechanical performance of cranial implants, an experimental procedure has been designed and used in this work for producing polymethylmethacrylate supports, on which the cranial prostheses were firmly connected and subjected to impact puncture tests (drop tests). An experimental campaign could thus be conducted to investigate the effect on the mechanical response of (a) the titanium alloy, (b) the initial blank thickness and (c) the manufacturing process. Drop tests, carried out according to the proposed procedure, have shown no failure of the prostheses, neither in the area of the impact nor in the anchoring region and have revealed that, irrespective of the adopted manufacturing process, which does not alter the material, the amount of energy absorbed by the implants is always larger than 70%.

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Acknowledgements

The activities in this work were funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research Government through the PRIN Project 2012 “Biomedical Titanium alloy prostheses manufacturing by means of Superplastic and Incremental Forming processes” (project acronym: BIOFORMING).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Energetica e Gestionale, Università della Calabria, Rende, Italy

    G. Ambrogio, E. Sgambitterra & L. De Napoli

  2. Dipartimento di Meccanica, Matematica e Management, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy

    G. Palumbo, P. Guglielmi & A. Piccininni

  3. Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “G. Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    T. Villa

  4. Università di Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

    G. Fragomeni

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  1. G. Ambrogio
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Correspondence to G. Ambrogio.

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Ambrogio, G., Palumbo, G., Sgambitterra, E. et al. Experimental investigation of the mechanical performances of titanium cranial prostheses manufactured by super plastic forming and single-point incremental forming. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 98, 1489–1503 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-2338-6

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