A selective strategy for determining suitable structure and fatigue behavior study of minimal surface scaffolds fabricated by EBM

[Display omitted] •A simple selective strategy was proposed to determine the scaffolds with appropriate pore structure and mechanical stability.•EBM made minimal surface scaffolds show good fatigue property for implanted medical devices.•The fatigue behaviors of scaffolds were found to include microplastic deformation, fatigue ratchet, fatigue damage and fracture. This work provides a selective strategy to determine structure shape and fatigue life suitable for implanted scaffolds, meeting the demands of long-term bone implantation. Scaffolds were designed by a novel mathematical method and fabricated by additive manufacturing EBM using Ti-6Al-4V. The failure mechanism of the scaffolds under high cycle fatigue was revealed by Micro-CT, FEA and SEM, which ensures the scaffolds have fatigue life >106 at stress level of 0.2. It was found scaffolds with larger unite size help to decrease notch sites for crack initiation, resulting in the improvement of fatigue life without reducing the porosity of scaffolds.