Abstract
Acrylic resins based on polymetyl metacrylate are used in dental prosthetics as base for dentures. One of the major failure causes of dentures is the fatigue damage of the acrylic resins. These materials, in addition to mechanical behavior, also present a high risk of structural defects (voids, micro-cracks, residual monomer) that can significantly affect the fatigue behavior. In this paper, two commercial acrylic resins have been experimentally analyzed in terms of mechanical and fatigue behavior. Tensile constant amplitude fatigue tests with stress ratio R = 0 and frequency of 2 Hz have been carried out on samples of the two acrylic resins, prepared according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. The results revealed, besides the brittle fracture character, a similar fatigue behavior following a Weibull distribution. Also, through statistical processing of the results, the fatigue curve equations of the two analyzed materials were estimated for different levels of confidence.
Keywords: acrylic resin; dentures; mechanical properties; fatigue behavior; Weibull distribution