Enhancing the durability of spinal implant fixture applications made of Ti-6Al-4V ELI by means of cavitation peening

The surface treatment technology known as ‘cavitation peening’ was employed in this study in order to enhance the durability of spinal implant fixture applications, which are subject to fretting fatigue. Cavitation peening can be realized by a technique in which a high-speed water jet is injected into water through a nozzle. It utilizes a phenomenon by which surface impacts due to collapsing cavitation bubbles induce work-hardening by introducing residual compressive stress near the surface. A fretting fatigue test was conducted on a spinal implant rod made of Ti-6Al-4V ELI in accordance with the ASTM F1717 standard, which is the established method for testing spinal implants after they are treated by cavitation peening. The residual stress was evaluated by using X-ray diffraction analysis. The hardness over the cross-sectional area was also measured using an indentation test. The obtained results show that cavitation peening drastically improves the fretting fatigue properties of spinal implant fixtures by as much as 2.2 times compared to untreated ones. This can be attributed to a significant increase in the hardness from 5.0 to 9.6 GPa and a high compressive residual stress of over 600 MPa induced by cavitation peening.