2007 Volume 1 Issue 11 Pages 1331-1340
Recently, development of medical devices such as catheter and stent are advanced in the low invasion medical field. Considering the functions of human body are affected severely by the medical devices, the high strength reliability of devices must be secured. In these circumstances, the thin metal film, which has high reliability of strength, is useful structural material for further development of low invasion medical device. As the strength characteristics of a thin film depend on thickness and formation process of itself, there is little strength database concerning a thin metal film. In this study, a tensile fatigue testing apparatus with cyclic loading frequency up to 30Hz and maximum loading 8 N for the thin metal film has been developed, and thin rolled films Ti and SUS304 were evaluated on tensile and load-controlled fatigue strength. The static tensile tests give that both are also over the twice of the bulk material on the tensile strength, and the proof stress is high-strength with over 90% of tensile strength respectively. The fatigue test shows that Ti thin film has long life in comparison with the bulk material, however, the fatigue characteristic itself is similar like that of bulk material.
