Structural Integrity of Enamel: Experimental and Modeling

2009 ◽  
Vol 88 (6) ◽  
pp. 529-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Xie ◽  
M.V Swain ◽  
M.J. Hoffman

Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the human body and is directly responsible for dental function. Due to its non-regenerative nature, enamel is unable to heal and repair itself biologically after damage. We hypothesized that with its unique microstructure, enamel possesses excellent resistance to contact-induced damage, regardless of loading direction. By combining instrumented indentation tests with microstructural analysis, we report that enamel can absorb indentation energy through shear deformation within its protein layers between apatite crystallites. Moreover, a near-isotropic inelastic response was observed when we analyzed indentation data in directions either perpendicular or parallel to the path of enamel prisms. An “effective” crystal orientation angle, 33°–34°, was derived for enamel microstructure, independent of the loading direction. These findings will help guide the design of the nanostructural architecture of dental restorative materials.

Holzforschung ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Stanzl-Tschegg ◽  
Wilfried Beikircher ◽  
Dieter Loidl

Abstract Thermal modification is a well established method to improve the dimensional stability and the durability for outdoor use of wood. Unfortunately, these improvements are usually accompanied with a deterioration of mechanical performance (e.g., reduced strength or higher brittleness). In contrast, our investigations of the hardness properties in the longitudinal direction of beech wood revealed a significant improvement with thermal modification. Furthermore, we applied instrumented indentation tests on different hierarchical levels of wood structure (growth ring and cell wall level) to gain closer insights on the mechanisms of thermal treatment of wood on mechanical properties. This approach provides a variety of mechanical data (e.g., elastic parameters, hardness parameters, and viscoelastic properties) from one single experiment. Investigations on the influence of thermal treatment on the mechanical properties of beech revealed similar trends on the growth ring as well as the on the cell wall level of the wood structure.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1950-1959 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Hakiri ◽  
A. Matsuda ◽  
M. Sakai

In instrumented indentation tests for a thin film coating on a substrate (film/substrate composite), it is well known that the substrate-affected contact area estimated through conventional approximations includes significant uncertainties, leading to a crucial difficulty in determining the elastic modulus and the contact hardness. To overcome this difficulty, an instrumented indentation microscope that enables researchers to make an in situ determination of the contact area is applied to an elastoplastic film on substrates having various values of their elastic moduli. Using the indentation microscope, the substrate-affected indentation contact parameters including contact hardness of the film/substrate composites are determined directly as well as quantitatively without any undesirable assumptions and approximations associated with the contact area estimate. The effect of a stiffer substrate on the contact profile of impression is significant, switching the profile from sinking in to piling up during penetration, and resulting in the substrate-affected contact hardness being highly enhanced at deeper penetrations. Through the present experimental study, it is demonstrated how efficient that instrumented indentation microscopy is in determining the substrate-affected elastoplastic contact parameters of film/substrate composite systems.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 1680-1686
Author(s):  
L.Z. Liu ◽  
Y.W. Bao ◽  
Y.C. Zhou

Finite element analyses were carried out to simulate the loading, unloading, and reloading processes of indentation tests. It was found that the validity of applying the elastic contact theory to the indentation unloading process is strongly related to the strain hardening and residual stress in impression. It is the combination of strain hardening and residual stress that causes the unloading or reloading curves to show elastic loading in the range from zero to the maximum load whereas the reloading curve on the impression without strain hardening and residual stress shows elastic–plastic loading in the same range. These computations indicate that applying the elastic contact theory to the unloading or reloading processes, the fundamental prerequisite of the instrumented indentation technique, is valid because of the existence of strain hardening and residual stress. The mechanism of this hardening effect is discussed through energy analysis.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (12) ◽  
pp. 3653-3663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taihua Zhang ◽  
Peng Jiang ◽  
Yihui Feng ◽  
Rong Yang

Instrumented indentation tests have been widely adopted for elastic modulus determination. Recently, a number of indentation-based methods for plastic properties characterization have been proposed, and rigorous verification is absolutely necessary for their wide application. In view of the advantages of spherical indentation compared with conical indentation in determining plastic properties, this study mainly concerns verification of spherical indentation methods. Five convenient and simple models were selected for this purpose, and numerical experiments for a wide range of materials are carried out to identify their accuracy and sensitivity characteristics. The verification results show that four of these five methods can give relatively accurate and stable results within a certain material domain, which is defined as their validity range and has been summarized for each method.


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 3004-3008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianjun Wang ◽  
Wan Jiang ◽  
Lidong Chen ◽  
Guangzhao Bai

Nanostructured Ti5Si3–TiC–Ti3SiC2 and Ti5Si3–TiC composites were in situfabricated through the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique using Ti and SiC powders as reactants. It was found that the composites could be prepared in arelatively short time (6 min at 1260 °C) above 98% theoretical density. The phase constituents and microstructures of the samples were analyzed by x-ray diffractionand observed by scanning electron microscopy. Transmission electron microscopywas used for detailed microstructural analysis. The results showed that the reaction products mainly consisted of Ti5Si3 and TiC phases or Ti5Si3, TiC and Ti3SiC2phases, depending on the molar ratio of reactants (Ti to SiC). The composites exhibited fine microstructure; TiC grain size was less than 200 nm. Fracturetoughness at room temperature was also measured by indentation tests.


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