Forging is one of the techniques traditionally used in the manufacture of knee implants. As the material deforms, stress develops during forging. When these stresses exceed a threshold, it can render a product defective due to development of cracking, tearing, delamination, deformation, underfill, etc. in the product. In the present work, key forging parameters such as die velocity ( \(\:{V}_{d}\) ), workpiece initial temperature ( \(\:{T}_{w}\) ), friction coefficient ( \(\:\mu\:\) ) and die initial temperature ( \(\:{T}_{d}\) ) for forging the femoral component of knee implants with titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) were optimized using Taguchi’s method for reducing the stresses developed in the material through a finite element (FE) simulation. A 3D distal femur bone model constructed from a CT scan was used to design the knee implant model. The forging parameters that were found to be optimal are: 1000 °C for \(\:{T}_{w}\:\) , 450 °C for \(\:{\:T}_{d}\) , 0.35 for \(\:\mu\:\) and 2 mm/s for \(\:{V}_{d}\) . The die speed, with a contribution of 80.27%, were observed to significantly influence the Von Mises stress development as compared to the other key forging parameters. These optimal key forging parameters can be utilised for forging implants with reduced stresses to increase the reliability of the product. The proposed work sheds light on the key parameters that need to be carefully considered when designing forging dies.
