Fatigue Life of the Human Teeth: A Continuum Damage Approach

Abstract

Normal oral food ingestion processes such as mastication would not have been possible without the teeth. The human teeth are subjected to many cyclic loadings per day. This, in turn, exerts forces on the teeth just like an engineering material undergoing the same cyclic loading. Over a period, there will be the creation of microcracks on the teeth that might not be visible ab initio. The constant formation of these microcracks weakens the teeth structure and foundation that result in its fracture. Therefore, the need to predict the fatigue life for human teeth is essential. In this paper, a continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based model is employed to evaluate the fatigue life of the human teeth. The material characteristic of the teeth is captured within the framework of the elastoplastic model. By applying the damage evolution equivalence, a mathematical formula is developed that describes the fatigue life in terms of the stress amplitude. Existing experimental data served as a guide as to the completeness of the proposed model. Results as a function of age and tubule orientation are presented. The outcomes produced by the current study have substantial agreement with the experimental results when plotted on the same axes. There is a notable difference in the number of cycles to failure as the tubule orientation increases. It is also revealed that the developed model could forecast for any tubule orientation and be adopted for both young and old teeth.