Glass ionomer cements show great potential as low cost, minimally invasive dental restorative materials. However, their use is limited by relatively poor mechanical properties, especially fracture toughness. One possibility for improving their fracture toughness is through the addition of fluorhydroxyapatite nanoparticles, which resemble the crystals found in tooth enamel. Hydroxyapatite and fl...

In order to replicate the fracture behavior of the intact human skull under impact it becomes necessary to develop a material having the mechanical properties of cranial bone. The most important properties to replicate in a surrogate human skull were found to be the fracture toughness and tensile strength of the cranial tables as well as the bending strength of the three-layer (inner table-dipl...

Owing to a lack of microstructure, glassy materials are inherently strong but brittle, and often demonstrate extreme sensitivity to flaws. Accordingly, their macroscopic failure is often not initiated by plastic yielding, and almost always terminated by brittle fracture. Unlike conventional brittle glasses, metallic glasses are generally capable of limited plastic yielding by shear-band sliding...

Although implants made with bioactive glass have shown promising results for bone repair, their application in repairing load-bearing long bones is limited due to their low fracture toughness and fairly fast degradation response in vivo. In this paper, we describe our investigation of freeform extrusion fabrication of silicate based 13-93 bioactive glass scaffolds reinforced with titanium fiber...

The development of composite materials that are simultaneously strong and tough is one of the most active topics of current material science. Observations of biological structural materials show that adequate introduction of reinforcements and interfaces, or interphases, at different scales usually improves toughness, without reduction in strength. The prospect of interphase properties tuning m...

Stimulus-responsive or “smart” gels are of potential interest as sensors and actuators, in industrial separations, and as permeable delivery systems [1]. In most applications, a certain degree of mechanical strength and toughness will be required, yet the large-strain behavior of gels has not been widely reported. Some exceptions include work on gelatin [2] and other food gels [3], some charact...

Resin composites currently available are not suitable for use as large stress-bearing posterior restorations involving cusps due to their tendencies toward excessive fracture and wear. The glass fillers in composites provide only limited reinforcement because of the brittleness and low strength of glass. The aim of the present study was to reinforce dental resins with ceramic single-crystalline...

background: this study is the first research investigating the possible effect of pulsed power signals on the characteristics of cortical bone by comparing the mechanical properties of this type of bone pre and post expose to pulsed power. methods: a positive buck-boost converter was applied to generate adjustable high voltage, high frequency pulses (up to 500 v and 10 khz). the functional beha...

In this paper, the influence of the extra solid phase reaction on the interface structure and mechanical properties of titanium carbonitride-based cermets were investigated. The extra solid phase reaction in the preparation process of cermets could induce the formation of a core/rim/binder interface with the coherent structure and reinforce the interface bonding strength in cermets. The existen...

Natural structural materials such as bone and seashells are made of relatively weak building blocks, yet they exhibit remarkable combinations of stiffness, strength and toughness. This performance can be largely explained by their ‘‘staggered microstructure’’: stiff inclusions of high aspect ratio are laid parallel to each other with some overlap, and bonded by a softer matrix. While stiffness ...