Finite Element Simulation of Stainless Steel Porous Scaffolds for Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Its Experimental Investigation

In recent years, bone defect and bone tissue damage have become common clinical diseases. The development of bionic bone has had an important impact on the repair and reconstruction of bone tissue. Porous scaffolds have the advantages of adjustable pore size and controllable shape, which can solve the problem of mismatch in the process of bone repair, but traditional processing methods cannot overcome the challenge of the preparation of complex porous scaffolds. Therefore, 316L porous stainless steel scaffolds with different pore sizes (200 mu m, 300 mu m, 400 mu m and 500 mu m, respectively) were prepared by selective laser melting. Stress and strain were simulated and analyzed by using a finite element simulation method. Combined with a heat treatment experiment, a hardness test, a metallographic observation and a compression test, porous scaffolds were studied. The mechanical properties and microstructures of the scaffolds were studied and analyzed, and the optimized porous scaffolds were obtained. With reasonable melting parameters, the porous scaffolds that could meet the mechanical property requirements of load-bearing bone restorations were prepared by SLM.