Mechanical properties of a Ti6Al4V porous structure produced by selective laser melting

This paper designs one octahedral Ti6Al4V porous structure and then establishes a simplified model. The Ti6Al4V porous structure is manufactured by selective laser melting. Its experimental and theoretical fracture loads are obtained through theoretical calculation and compression test respectively. The result demonstrates that there is an exponential relationship between the experimental fracture load and the porosity of the porous structure. With an average relative error of 5.86%, the deviation between experimental and theoretical fracture load is small, which indicates that the predication accuracy is comparatively high. So the fracture load calculation theory is valuable in practical applications. Finally, the fracture analysis indicates that fractures of units and porous structures are brittle fractures, which belong to cleavage fracture. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.