Influence of porosity on the mechanical properties of microporous β-TCP bioceramics by usual and instrumented Vickers microindentation

Beta-tricalcium phosphate Ca₃(PO₄)₂, β-TCP] is a bioresorbable material showing an excellent biocompatibility. However, sintering of β-TCP is difficult and the material presents poor mechanical strength and a low resistance to crack-growth propagation. In this study, influence of the porosity on the hardness and the elastic modulus is studied by means of usual and instrumented microindentation tests. Nevertheless, indentation diagonals measurement by optical observations is not accurate due to the crack formation around the residual indent. That is why instrumented indentation test which allows deducing the hardness and the bulk modulus from the load-depth curve analysis is used as an alternative method. The corresponding hardness number can be calculated by using the maximum indentation depth (Martens Hardness) or the contact depth determined by Oliver and Pharr's method (Contact Hardness). But in order to give representative values when comparing classical and instrumented hardness measurements, Martens hardness is preferred because its value can be directly related to the value of the Vickers hardness number by simple geometrical considerations.In this work, bioceramics were produced by conventional sintering of β-TCP powders synthesized by aqueous precipitation. Different process conditions were chosen to obtain microporous ceramics with a porosity rate between 0 and 14% in volume. As main results, the elastic modulus is found decreasing between 166 GPa and 108 GPa and the hardness number from 4.4 GPa to 2.2 GPa when increasing the porosity rate. A model connecting mechanical properties to porosity rate and grain arrangement is validated for the elastic modulus whereas deviation is observed for the hardness number. However, we propose an original approach where the relative variation of the two mechanical properties can be expressed with a unique relation as a function of the porosity volume fraction.