Structural Titanium Biomedical Alloys for Aerospace Applications

Historically, there has been a transfer of technology and commercial metallic alloys developed for aerospace and industrial applications into the manufacture of implantable medical and surgical devices. Examples include: stainless steels (ATI 316L), cobalt base alloys (ATI 35N alloy, ATI L-605 alloy) and titanium alloys (ATI Ti-CP-2, Ti-6Al-4V ELI, ATI Ti-6Al-4V, ATI Ti-3Al-2.5V). There has not, however, been significant cross-pollination of metallic alloys developed for biocompatibility and other specialized requirements of the medical industries into industrial and aerospace applications. This talk will present an overview of the mechanical properties of selected titanium alloys designed specifically for structural orthopedic implant applications with a comparison with more traditional aerospace titanium alloys. These structural biomedical titanium alloys include an alpha+beta alloy (ATI Ti-6Al-7Nb alloy) and several metastable beta alloys (Stryker TMZF® [Ti-12Mo-6Zr-2Fe] alloy, ATI Ti-15Mo alloy, ATI TiOsteum® [Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta] alloy).