Early resin luting material damage around a circular fiber post in a root canal treated premolar by using micro-computerized tomographic and finite element sub-modeling analyses

This study utilizes micro-computerized tomographic (micro-CT) and finite element (FE) sub-modeling analyses to investigate the micro-mechanical behavior associated with voids/bubbles stress behavior at the luting material layer to understand the early damage in a root canal treated premolar. 3-dimensional finite element (FE) models of a macro-root canal treated premolar and two sub-models at the luting material layer to provide the void/bubble distribution and dimensions were constructed from micro-CT images and simulated to receive axial and lateral forces. The boundary conditions for the sub-models were determined from the macro-premolar model results and applied in sub-modeling analysis. The first principal stresses for the dentin, luting material layer and post in macro-premolar model and for luting material void/bubble in sub-models were recorded. The simulated results revealed that the macro-premolar model dramatically underestimated the luting material stress because the voids/bubbles at the adhesive layer cannot be captured due to coarse mesh and high stress gradient and the variations between sub- and macro-models ranging from 2.65 to 4.5 folds under lateral load at the mapping location. Stress concentrations were found at the edge of the voids/bubbles and values over 20 MPa in sub-modeling analysis immediately caused the luting material failure/micro-crack. This study establishes that micro-CT and FE sub-modeling techniques can be used to simulate the stress pattern at the micro-scale luting material layer in a root canal treated premolar, suggesting that attention must be paid to resin luting material initial failure/debonding when large voids/bubbles are generated during luting procedures.