Designing Porous Structures for Orthopedic Applications Using Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

The need to develop better materials for fabricating orthopedic implants is the key to manufacturing longer lasting implants with a reduced chance of early failure and the need for revision surgeries. This work aims to provide a logical and methodical approach in designing porous structures using tools such as Topology Optimization (TO), Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) alongside Additive Manufacturing (AM) to fabricate orthopedic implants.Porous structures were designed using topology optimization to tailor mechanical properties that match that of the human bone. The mechanical properties of suitable structures were determined computationally using finite element analysis. Further, the structures depicting desirable properties were manufactured using Electron Beam Melting (EBM) to experimentally verify their mechanical properties. The results show that we were able to successfully design a porous structure that had a Young’s modulus as low as 1.7 GPa which falls well within the range of that of human bone making it a viable material for developing orthopedic implants.