Effect of material properties of composite restoration on the strength of the restoration–dentine interface due to polymerization shrinkage, thermal and occlusal loading

The purpose of this investigation was to adopt an analytical approach to analyse stresses at the restoration–dentine interface caused by polymerization shrinkage, occlusal and thermal loading with the primary focus on evaluating the effect of the material properties of the composite restoration on the strength of the interface. Some essential simplifications were employed to derive an explicit analytical solution. The results confirm previous findings that interfacial stresses due to polymerization shrinkage are increased with the higher modulus of elasticity of the restoration, while Poisson's ratio of the restorative material has a very small influence on these stresses. Occlusal loading resulted in much lower interfacial stresses when compared to shrinkage and thermal loads. The obtained results were in a good agreement with other numerical and clinical studies. From the modelling analysis it was found that the majority of commercially available composite restorative materials are expected to create significant interfacial stresses when subjected to cold temperatures. In addition, it was shown that there is a considerable potential for interfacial stresses to be minimised by an appropriate selection of thermo-mechanical properties of the restorative material especially with the new finding on the negative temperature variation effect.