An Experimental and Numerical Study of Stresses in Teeth Crown Materials

Abstract

Dental tooth is made of different materials such as soft, hard and intermediate hardness materials. Acrylic is the softer material but it has poor mechanical properties. It has been documented that the strength of Acrylic is increased by incorporation of Zirconia as filler material. The objective of this study is to find out the optimum composition of tooth material which develops the low amount of stresses during loading. For this purpose experimental as well as numerical analysis of Acrylic (PMMA), Composition A (PMMA reinforced with 10% of ZrO2) and Zirconia (ZrO2) tooth was carried out. For this study standard molar tooth design is used which is available for dental practices. Considering the biting of hard materials, three loads mainly 150N, 200N and 250N were applied. These loads are equally distributed on four contact points at top surface of the tooth while bottom surface of the tooth is considered as the fixed support. Among these three materials composition A (PMMA reinforced with 10% of ZrO2) material shows the stresses and deformation in between PMMA and ZrO2 tooth