Production of porous titanium structures by combining hot isostatic pressing and solid-state foaming

The Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) process is based on the combined action of high levels of pressure and temperature. In general, such a process is used for reducing or eliminating microporosities in the component, especially when it is produced by additive manufacturing (AM) or casting. In the present work HIP is used for compacting TI6Al4V-ELI powders by means of a pressurized Argon gas acting at high temperature on a sealed can under vacuum in which Argon is previously inflated; thus, a subsequent Solid-State Foaming (SSF) heat treatment allows to produce a Titanium foam without any melting by exploiting gas entrapment. Samples extracted from billets produced setting different HIP parameters (size of Titanium particles and pressures) have been investigated in this work by means of heat treatments in furnace for the SSF: the temperature was kept constant (1020 °C), but the duration was varied in the range 1 - 6 h; the samples were finally analysed by Light Microscopy. Finally, the Response Surface Method (RSM) was used to determine the conditions able to increase both the size and the percentage area of the pores in order to fully control both the involved processes (HIP and SSF). Experimental results revealed that the porosity determined by the SSF is strongly affected by HIP parameters and by the SSF duration: the highest dimension of Ti particles and the highest level of Argon pressure determined the largest values of porosity, in terms of both percentage and pore dimension. The investigated process for producing porous titanium structures can be properly and efficiently combined with manufacturing processes able to create highly customised parts, not only in terms of geometry but also in terms of porosity.