Mechanical Stability of RCSed and ECAPed Intramedullary 316L Stainless Steel Nails in the Treatment of Diaphyseal Bone Fractures

Over the last several decades, implants have been used to treat fractures and promote healing. The most important reason for deformation and shortening of the bone during healing due to loading on the nails is a lack of strength of the intramedullary nail. Materials with very fine grain dimensions are considered for such purposes. Ultrafine-grained (UFG) materials have structural elements with very fine grain sizes. Several methods for producing UFG materials have been developed, one of which is the top-down approach, which refines coarse-grained metals via severe plastic deformation (SPD). The SPD technique has several advantages that set it apart from other methods of synthesizing. Two of the SPD methods used in this study were the repetitive corrugation and straightening (RCS) process and the equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) process on a 316L stainless steel rod. Mechanical tests were performed on the rods produced using these methods. Under loading, simulation results revealed that the bone implanted by the RCS rod has greater structural stiffness than the bone implanted by an ECAPed 316L stainless steel rod.