Effects of Zirconium on mechanical and electrochemical properties of Ti-15mo alloy for biomedical applications

The Ti-15Mo Alloy is a desirable source for usage as a biomaterial due to its outstanding corrosion resistance and a strong balance of mechanical qualities such as hardness, elastic modulus, and wear resistance. Zr additions were made in this work at four distinct weight-percentages 0.5,1.1.5, &2 3wt %). Powder metallurgy was used to create the alloys in a steel mold, followed by 6 hours of sintering at 950 °C. The influence of Zr alloy additions was studied using scanning electron microscopy(SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), corrosion behavior in Hank’s solutions, and mechanically such as (compression strength, hardness, wear, and elastic modulus). The alloys’ structure with β phase has better mechanical properties than titanium due to strengthening solid solution. The hardness results indicate an improvement of up to 37%, while the compressive strength has reached a 65% from the base alloy. The results revealed that the wear loss was significantly improved as the Zr was added and the corrosion current and corrosion rate was drastically reduced.