Analysis of Sintering of Titanium Porous Material Processed by the Space Holder Method

Abstract

In this work the sintering behaviour of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy porous materials prepared by the space holder (SH) method have been analysed in terms of mechanical properties and microstructural characterisation. The porous materials were processed under vacuum and different sintering cycles were analysed. Other variables studied were space holder size fraction and content, and compaction pressure. The influence of these factors on bending strength was analysed. Microstructural observation was carried out by means of optical and electron microscopy in order to correlate microstructure to the observed mechanical behaviour. Results showed that different processing conditions were to be used for different SH content to obtain better properties. Furthermore, minimising the contact time between alloy powders and space holder resulted to be a critical point in the processing of these materials.