Improvement of Mechanical Properties of CoCrMo Alloys through Microstructure Engineering Using Powder Metallurgy

One of the strategies to improve mechanical performance in metallic materials is the design of microstructures. For instance, bimodal microstructures can yield a good balance between strength and ductility. However, microstructure engineering cannot be easily performed by conventional processing techniques such as casting. With this aim, powder metallurgy offers high versatility, allowing the modification of the powder prior to sintering, as well as different consolidation techniques that highly influence the resulting microstructure.This work investigates the combination of surface deformation of small sized powder particles by mechanical milling with rapid sintering by Spark Plasma Sintering to manufacture CoCrMo parts with advanced properties. The results show increased hardness through grain size refinement, promising for biomedical applications.