A Comprehensive Study of a Novel Explosively Hardened Pure Titanium Alloy for Medical Applications

Pure titanium is gaining increasing interest due to its potential use in dental and orthopedic applications. Due to its relatively weak mechanical parameters, a limited number of components manufactured from pure titanium are available on the market. In order to improve the mechanical parameters of pure titanium, manufacturers use alloys containing cytotoxic vanadium and aluminum. This paper presents unique explosive hardening technology that can be used to strengthen pure titanium parameters. The analysis confirms that explosive induced alpha-omega martensitic transformation and crystallographic anisotropy occurred due to the explosive pressure. The mechanical properties related to residual stresses are very nonuniform. The corrosion properties of the explosive hardened pure titanium test do not change significantly compared to nonhardened titanium. The biocompatibility of all the analyzed samples was confirmed in several tests. The morphology of bone cells does not depend on the titanium surface phase composition and crystallographic orientation.