Investigation of three-body wear of dental materials under different chewing cycles

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates the three-body wear resistance rates of five restorative dental composite materials at different mastication cycles and compares the results with that of an amalgam material. Five specimens of each material were exposed three-body wear tests using a computer-controlled chewing simulator with steatite balls as the antagonist (1.6 Hz, 49 N load; 120,000, 240,000 and 480,000 mechanical cycles; and thermal cycling between 5 and 55°C at 5 min/cycle and 3000 cycles) immersed in a poppy seed slurry (three-body wear environment). Initially, the microhardness values of the composite materials in the Vicker’s hardness (HV) scale were determined. The mean volume loss of the worn surfaces was measured with a three-dimensional profilometer. Means and standard deviations were calculated, and statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA (α=0.05). Additionally, scanning electron microscopy analysis was performed to examine the wear tracks on the surface. The interactions between the composite resin and mean volume loss were found to be significant. The three-body wear rates for the composites Durafil and Kalore composite were significantly higher than those of the other composites and the amalgam irrespective of the number of mastication cycles. Filtek Z250 and Filtek Supreme composite resins had good three-body wear resistance similar to that of the amalgam. However, this study suggests that the correlation between Vicker’s hardness and three-body wear resistance is not significant.