Bending fatigue and spring back properties of implant rods made of β-type titanium alloy for spinal fixture

Implanting a spinal fixture using metallic rods is one of the effective treatments for spinal diseases. Because cyclic bending stress is loaded on the implant rods when patients move their upper bodies in daily life, bending fatigue properties are important for the implant rod. Further, the implant rods are bended plastically into a curved shape of spine by hand in a surgical operation. In that case, keeping shape is important, namely bending spring back properties are important factors. On the other hand, a biomedical β-type titanium alloy, Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr (mass %) alloy (TNTZ), has been developed by the authors. Currently, this alloy are investigated to be applied to the above mentioned implant rod practically. Therefore, four-point bending fatigue and three point-bending spring back properties of TNTZ subjected various heat treatments were examined in this study. TNTZ rods were subjected to solution treatment, and then some of them were subjected to aging treatment at 673 K or 723 K for 259.2 ks, followed by water quenching. Then, four-point bending fatigue and three-point bending spring back tests were carried out on TNTZ rods subjected to the various heat treatments mentioned above. The bending fatigue strength at 2.5 million cycles in the high cycle fatigue region are not much different among any TNTZ rod. However, the bending fatigue strength of the Ti-6Al-4V ELI (Ti64) rod exceeds the fatigue strengths of every TNTZ rods in both low and high cycle fatigue regions. On the other hand, the lower spring back, which is a favorable property, was obtained for some TNTZ rod than Ti64 rod.