Fiber Reinforced Denture Base and Its Flexural Strength

Abstract

The denture base made of dental resin (PMMA) is widely used because it can be produced rather cheaply and molded easily, but this kind of denture base shows some weakness, such as low stiffness and low strength.
So, as the upper partial and complete denture bases, we have developed various types of fiber reinforced denture bases using the organic fiber (Kevlar-49) as their reinforcement, and compared their flexural properties with that of the unreinforced denture base. The reinforcing types tried are reinforcement by unidirectional fiber along the arrangement of the anterior teeth, lamination of cloth FRP on the palatal area, and local reinforcement at the remaining tooth (the notch part) using various methods. All these types are considered practical for dental use. By taking the deformation behavior of the denture base during the mastication into consideration, the loading condition for testing was selected so as to give a uniform bending moment in the denture base.
The results show that the fractural strength in bending of these reinforced denture bases in bending improved 10-190% over that of the unreinforced denture base, and the stiffness of these reinforced denture bases increased. Although the effectiveness of such reinforcement is shown here only on one kind of reinforced denture base using the organic fiber as reinforcement, it is expected that such fiber reinforced denture bases should become very useful for dental use.