Two ways of evaluating the wear property of Ti-13Nb-13Zr fabricated by selective laser melting

Abstract The traditional way to evaluate the wear performance of a material is to conduct wear tests, which has strict requirements on the size and shape of the sample. Besides, the wear process will damage the sample, which is unwanted for the biomaterials. In this work, we performed the nanoindentation test to measure the wear performance through the hardness ( H ) and reduced elastic modulus ( Er ) and the results were verified by the wear tests. It is found that the Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy fabricated with the reasonable energy density has a reduced coefficient of friction of 0.18 and a wear rate of 3.3867 × 10 −4 mm 3 N −1 m −1 and has the highest H / Er and H 3 / Er 2 ratios. Additionally, the H / Er and H 3 / Er 2 ratios of SLM-fabricated Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy are higher than those of pure titanium, suggesting a better wear resistance.