Formability of Porous Tantalum Sheet-Metal

Over the past ten years, a novel cellular solid, Trabecular Metal (TM), has been developed for use in the orthopaedics industry as an ingrowth scaffold. Manufactured using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on top of a graphite foam substrate, this material has a regular matrix of interconnecting pores, high strength, and high porosity. Manufacturing difficulties encourage the application of bending, stamping and forming technologies to increase CVD reactor throughput and reduce material wastes. In this study, the bending and forming behaviour of Trabecular Metal (TM) was evaluated using a novel camera-based system for measuring surface strains, since the conventional approach of printing or etching gridded patterns was not feasible. A forming limit diagram was obtained using specially fabricated 1.65 mm thick sheets. A springback coefficient was measured and modeled using effective hexagonal cell arrangements.