Tribo-corrosion of steel in artificial saliva

• Assessment of micro-abrasion of stainless steel in artificial saliva for application to dental implants.
• Development of micro-abrasion maps for stainless steel in artificial saliva.
• Identifying an optimum window of exposure conditions, with potential applications to dental implants.

Stainless steel can be used as a dental implant. However, there has been little work on the micro-abrasion of such materials in laboratory simulated oral environments, where abrasion, sliding wear can interact simultaneously. In this study, the effects of applied load, and exposure time were evaluated for a 316 stainless steel in a laboratory simulated artificial saliva. Polarization curves showed an enhancement of corrosion current density with increases in applied load. Wear maps were produced showing wear safety regimes at intermediate loads and exposure times. Possible reasons for such trends are interpreted in terms of the ability of the passive film in providing resistance against third body particle impact and the concentration of particles in the contact at higher loads.