Abstract:Porous titanium (Ti) has attracted much attention due to its elastic modulus similar to that of human bone tissue and the pore architectures allowing bone ingrow.The pore architectures not only have influence on the effect of bone ingrowth but also determine the mechanical properties of porous Ti. An ideal pore architecture can be constructed by precisely regulating of implicit function parameters of triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS). The Gyroid (G) cell structure was used in this paper. The influences of implicit function parameters of G cell on pore structure characteristics, such as porosity, pore diameter and strut diameter were investigated. The homogeneous pore structures with porosity of about 77% and pore size of 300 (G300) and 500 μm (G500) were designed. Mimicking the radial gradient structure of natural long bone, the graded G pore structure was constructed. Selective laser melting (SLM) technique was ultized to fabricate the porous Ti samples. Digital microscope and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to observe the pore architecture characteristics of the SLM-produced porous Ti. It was found that the measured porosities of SLM-produced Ti samples were lower than the designed values. The measured pore sizes were less than the designed values and the measured strut diameters were larger than the designed values. The compression tests were examined. The results showed that the elastic modulus of porous titanium of G300 and G500 was 2.04 GPa and 3.12 GPa, respectively, and its maximum compressive strength was 63.5 Mpa and 103.5 Mpa, respectively. The maximum compressive strength of porous titanium of gradient pore structure was 6.3 GPa and 186.9 MPa, respectively. These results indicated that the G cell gradient porous Ti could be an ideal alternative candidate for bone defect repairment in load-bearing sites.