This work is focused on the effect of natural defect on the fatigue resistance of a laser powder bed fusion additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V titanium. To reveal the fatigue strength variability and its sensitivity to the defect size, push-pull fatigue tests have been undertaken on specimens with different sizes of highly loaded volume of material. In order to easily vary the size of the highly loaded volume, specimens containing different numbers of surface hemispherical shape holes of 600 µm in diameter have been tested. This method also allowed to test small volume which triggered crack initiation from microstructural features.The fatigue damage mechanisms observed and the average natural defect size measured on the failure surfaces depend on the size of the highly stressed region. A higher fatigue strength is observed for smaller stressed volumes and defect free regions. To reduce the impact lack-offusion on fatigue and increase the probability of triggering crack initiation from a microstructural feature, the specimens were built in the horizontal direction. For specimens where fatigue cracks initiated at natural discontinuities, the results reported in a Kitagawa-Takahashi diagram revealed a critical defect size ( √ area) in the range of 30 µm. In addition, a probabilistic approach based on the weakest link theory is proposed. The model describes a probabilistic Kitagawa-Takahashi diagram accounting for the size of both the highly stressed volume and the natural defect.

The advent of new manufacturing technologies such as additive manufacturing deeply impacts the approach for the design of medical devices. It is now possible to design custom-made implants based on medical imaging, with complex anatomic shape, and to manufacture them. In this study, two geometrical configurations of implant devices are studied, standard and anatomical. The comparison highlights the drawbacks of the standard configuration, which requires specific forming by plastic strain in order to be adapted to the patient's morphology and induces stress field in bones without mechanical load in the implant. The influence of low elastic modulus of the materials on stress distribution is investigated. Two biocompatible alloys having the ability to be used with SLM additive manufacturing are considered, commercial Ti-6Al-4V and Ti-26Nb. It is shown that beyond the geometrical aspect, mechanical compatibility between implants and bones can be significantly improved with the modulus of Ti-26Nb implants compared with the Ti-6Al-4V.

The supports in additive manufacturing can be used in an innovative way by being considered as supports for machining operation. This innovative use of manufacturing supports can facilitate the finishing of functional thin structures. But the flexible global workpiece-supports system can potentially cause vibrations during the machining operation. This can cause irregular surfaces with bad quality.This study highlights the importance of additively manufactured support structures on the stability of Ti-6Al-4V parts milling by using supports as a machining fixture. Nowadays, the control of the support stiffness and mechanical properties is not proposed by specific AM software. A way to develop a numerical method to optimize the post-processing of additive manufacturing parts is to use specific lattice structures as supports. Indeed, by adjusting the topology and the beam diameter of lattices, the relative stiffness and the relative density of the global structure can be controlled. The objective of this study is to show that the stiffness of the manufacturing supports is crucial for the machining operation.To validate this concept, milling tests are proceeded on thin-walled plates produced by Selective Laser Melting (SLM) using defined finish milling cutting conditions. Three types of results are obtained: cutting forces signals, displacements and surface qualities by confocal microscopy. The study reveals that milling can induces chatters. Also, surface qualities and dimensional deviations depend on the support choice.The control of mechanical properties of support structures appears to be a good way to favor machining operation of flexible and thin-walled structures. Topology and dimensional parameters of supports have to be considered in preliminary design steps of the additive manufacturing digital chain.

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The present work proposes a parametric finite element model of the general case of a single loaded dental implant. The objective is to estimate and quantify the main effects of several parameters on stress distribution and load transfer between a loaded dental implant and its surrounding bone. The interactions between them are particularly investigated. Seven parameters (implant design and material) were considered as input variables to build the parametric finite element model: the implant diameter, length, taper and angle of inclination, Young’s modulus, the thickness of the cortical bone and Young’s modulus of the cancellous bone. All parameter combinations were tested with a full factorial design for a total of 512 models. Two biomechanical responses were identified to highlight the main effects of the full factorial design and first-order interaction between parameters: peri-implant bone stress and load transfer between bones and implants. The description of the two responses using the identified coefficients then makes it possible to optimize the implant configuration in a case study with type IV. The influence of the seven considered parameters was quantified, and objective information was given to support surgeon choices for implant design and placement. The implant diameter and Young’s modulus and the cortical thickness were the most influential parameters on the two responses. The importance of a low Young’s modulus alloy was highlighted to reduce the stress shielding between implants and the surrounding bone. This method allows obtaining optimized configurations for several case studies with a custom-made design implant.

Rapid prototyping is an effective way to build prototypes. This process, now called AM (Additive Manufacturing), is suited to realize functional single part or for small batch production. Evolution of AM is now in the way of serial production. In the field of medical applications and more precisely dentistry, AM is a way of increasing numbers of elements produced compared to classic production by lost wax casting. To increase production quality, it is necessary to have a high monitoring and control of process and properties of production. In the case of AM using (DMLS: Direct Metal Laser Sintering), a lot of parameters can have an influence on the elements production quality such as powders quality, laser behavior or sintering time… The goal of this work is to study the serial production quality using a DMLS system (Phenix System PM100). This system is used in production of cobalt-chromium elements for dental applications. The study was done on a period of 6 months with recording results of almost 120 productions and was focused on a quantity of around 7000 dental elements produced. In a first part, number of elements per production, room temperature and hygrometry, powder reloading, maintenance, production stops and new operators are recorded. Material properties of some elements produced such as dimensional properties, density, porosity and crystallographic phases are monitored. Materials analysis has led to ensure the elements quality produced by the Phenix system and results are discussed in this work. In a second part, we focused on the production analysis with the recorded data. Analysis leads to define 2 ratios: production ratio RP defined as [Elements Number]/ [Productions Number] and the efficiency production PE defined as the ratio RP/[Stopped production number]. By calculating RP and PE values with collected data on the Phenix system, a PM 100 efficiency production modeling has been established. The PM 100 production modeling can help to understand that increasing the production ratio RP value leads to have efficiency production PE high variation. On another hand, collecting production parameters leads to increase production efficiency.

In order to simulate micromachining of Ti-Nb medical devices produced in situ by selective laser melting, it is necessary to use constitutive models that allow one to reproduce accurately the material behavior under extreme loading conditions. The identification of these models is often performed using experimental tension or compression data. In this work, compression tests are conducted to investigate the impact of the loading conditions and the laser-based powder bed fusion (LB-PBF) building directions on the mechanical behavior of β-Ti42Nb alloy. Compression tests are performed under two strain rates (1 s−1 and 10 s−1) and four temperatures (298 K, 673 K, 873 K and 1073 K). Two LB-PBF building directions are used for manufacturing the compression specimens. Therefore, different metallographic analyses (i.e., optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and X-ray diffraction) have been carried out on the deformed specimens to gain insight into the impact of the loading conditions on microstucture alterations. According to the results, whatever the loading conditions are, specimens manufactured with a building direction of 45∘ exhibit higher flow stress than those produced with a building direction of 90∘, highlighting the anisotropy of the as-LB-PBFed alloy. Additionally, the deformed alloy exhibits at room temperature a yielding strength of 1180 ± 40 MPa and a micro-hardness of 310 ± 7 HV0.1. Experimental observations demonstrated two strain localization modes: a highly deformed region corresponding to the localization of the plastic deformation in the central region of specimens and perpendicular to the compression direction and an adiabatic shear band oriented with an angle of ±45 with respect to same direction.

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