Australian Dental Journal 1998;43:(1):5-8
An evalua tion of bond strengths of denture repair resins
by a torsional method
H. P. Y. Thean*
C. L. Chew*
K. I. Goh*
R. D. Norman†
Abstract
Chemical cure resin materials are generally used in
the repair of dentures. Different repair resins used
may yield different results. The bond strength of
three autopolymerizing resins were evaluated using
a torsional test method. The results showed that
Palapress and Caulk resins had a higher repair
strength than Rapid Repair resin.
Key words: Denture repair resins, bond strength, torsion
tests evaluation.
(Received for publication March 1995. Revised June
1995. Accepted July 1995.)
Introduction
Although resins for denture repairs are not as
extensively studied as adhesives to dentine, porcelain
or enamel, the importance of denture repairs cannot
be underestimated. Huggett et al.1 cited that nearly
three-quarters of a million dentures were repaired
each year in England and Wales at a cost of £4.7
million (at 1987 price) to the National Health
Service (UK) and an estimated similar amount is
spent by patients privately. Most of these repairs are
due to failure of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)
denture bases.
Smith2 noted that denture failure depends on the
shape, conditions of loading, inherent residual
stresses and mechanical properties of the denture
base. Farmer3 listed various clinical factors such as
improperly contoured mandibular occlusal plane,
high frenal attachment, incorrect occlusal schemes,
heavy occlusal forces, poor adaptation of the denture
base to the residual alveolar ridge and denture base
thickness as primary causes of denture fractures.
*Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, The
National University of Singapore.
†School of Dental Medicine, Southern Illinois University, USA.
Australian Dental Journal 1998;43:1.
Vallittu et al.4 noted that the highest incidence of
denture fractures occurred between 16-36 months
after being in service.
The clinician must often decide whether to repair
or replace the broken denture. To minimize
inconvenience to the patient and save costs in the
reconstruction of the dentures, quick and reliable
denture repairs are often necessary. Success depends
on correcting the offending clinical cause and a
strong repair junction. Confidence in the repair rests
on the repair resin. There is, therefore, a need to
fully characterize the bond strength of the denture
repair resins available in the market.
The purpose of the present study was to use the
torsional test proposed by Stewart et al.5 to assess the
relative merits of denture repair resins. It seeks to
compare the shear bond strength of three commer-
cially available acrylic resin denture repair materials
in vitro.
A torsional test was chosen as the stress exerted
on the specimen has a significant shear component
and is, therefore, closer to the clinical situation. The
torsion specimen also has a uniform state of stress at
any point on the specimen surface and this state of
stress is less dependent on parallelism and specimen
geometry than for diametral or three-point bending
tests.
Materials and methods
Three commercially available denture resin repair
materials, namely, Rapid Repair (RR), Caulk (CK),
and Palapress (PA) were selected for the study. The
denture base material used was a high impact heat
cured denture resin (Lucitone 199). The materials
are listed in Table 1.
Specimen preparation
Each of the specimens consisted of two rods made
of high impact heat cured denture base material
5
Table 1. List of materials used in the torsion test
Material Code Manufacturer
Base material
Lucitone 199 LT Caulk, Dentsply,
York Division, USA
Repair material
Rapid Repair RR De Trey, Dentsply,
Weybridge, England
Palapress PA Kulzer GmbH, Division
Dentale, Wehrheim/Ts
Germany
Caulk CK Caulk, Dentsply,
York Division, USA
W Repair resin.
w Lucitone 199 high impact denture base.
*All dimensions in mm.
Fig. 1.–Schematic diagram of test specimen.
linked by 3 mm of denture repair resin. One of the
rods was purely cylindrical while the other had a T-
shaped head to act as an anti-rotational device during
the testing process. A schematic diagram of the test
specimen is shown in Fig. 1.
The test specimens were prepared in two stages.
The first stage involved making the heat-cured resin
sections. Moulds were prepared by investing master
pattern blanks in Silky Rock‡ using a conventional
denture flasking technique. The mould space was
packed with Lucitone 199 high impact denture base
resin and the material cured in a thermostatically
controlled water bath using the long curing cycle,
according to the manufacturer’s instructions. A
powder to liquid ratio of 3:1 by volume was used to
form the dough.
After curing and benchcooling to room tempera-
ture the rods were deflasked and trimmed to a length
of 12 mm. The bonding surfaces and wetting areas
of the rods were uniformly prepared with a stone
lathe.§ Samples were inspected for consistency
before they were used. Those with voids or cracks
were discarded. The rods were stored in water at
room temperature until required.
The second stage involved joining the two sections
of the heat-cured cylinders together using a 3 mm
diameter by 3 mm length of chemical cure repair
resin. To facilitate alignment and joining of the two
parts, an addition condensation silicone putty
‡Whipmix Corporation, USA.
§Kavo EWL polishing machine and g rinding disc, 3000 rev/min. Germany.
6 Australian Dental Journal 1998;43:1.
Batch no Description
111991P High impact heat-cured denture base
103091B
HK6789/02 Chemical-cured PMMA denture base
HK6789/01
1708 Chemical-cured PMMA denture base
071184 Chemical-cured PMMA denture base
070384B
mould was made. The rods were placed 3 mm apart
and the bonding surfaces wetted with monomer of
the respective repair resins prior to placement of the
repair resin. The repair resin was hand-mixed and
placed into the mould space. The two parts of the
mould were joined and the assembly placed in a
water bath at 55°C for ten minutes under 0.23 MPa
pressure to cure the repair resin.
After curing, excess resin was removed using a
large cone-shaped tungsten carbide bur, size 82-T,
and polished with brown silicon points¶ to ensure
uniformity of the surfaces. All specimens were
produced with care to ensure that the size and
surface finish were standardized. The completed
specimens were kept in water at room temperature
for approximately one week before the test was
carried out. All the mechanical testing was done on
the same day with the same apparatus at room
temperature (23±1°C). Specimens were wiped dry
just prior to mounting on the testing apparatus.
Testing
Details of the method, calculations and the
mechanical testing apparatus used for the torsional
test were given by Stewart et al.5 The same apparatus
was used in this study. The specimen was locked in
place by the jaws of the movable chuck while the end
with the T-shaped antirotational device was placed
in the open end of a movable hollow housing. A
uniform torsional load of 0.1 Nm per minute was
applied until fracture occurred. Ten specimens were
tested per test group.
Statistical analysis was conducted on the samples
using one factor ANOVA. The differences between
samples were examined for significance at p<0.05
using Scheffe’s F-test.
Results
The quantitative results of the three tests are
shown in Table 2.
Table 2 shows the mean bond strength for the
three repair resins RR, PA and CK. The standard
deviation was of the order of 5-6 per cent, standard
,Menlo, USA.
¶HP 147 R2, Shofu, Japan.
Table 2. Mean bond strengths of the three
repair resins tested
Group Count Mean (MPa) Std Dev Std Error
RR 10 34.22 2.05 0.65
PA 10 42.06 2.18 0.69
CK 10 40.53 2.15 0.68
error of the order of 2 per cent, and the coefficient
of variation was between 5 and 6 per cent. The
results showed that the bond strengths in decreasing
order were PA, CK and RR.
One factor ANOVA followed by Scheffe’s F-test
showed that the difference in bond strength between
PA and RR and also between CK and RR were
significant at the p<0.05 level. The difference
between CK and PA were not significant at the
p<0.05 level.
The fractured surfaces were also carefully
examined to establish fracture patterns; adhesive (A)
failure between repair resin and denture base
material, cohesive (C) failure within the repair resin
or a combination of the two (A+C). All the failure
types were consistently A+C.
Figure 2 illustrates a typical fracture of a test
sample. There is cohesive failure within the repair
material and also adhesive failure between the repair
resin and denture base material. The illustration
shows a clean break between the repair resin and
denture base at the interface. The denture base
material remained intact in all the test specimens.
Discussion
In common with problems in other dental
adhesives, one important feature in evaluating
denture repair adhesion is the lack of a standardized
testing procedure. 6 A universal testing technique to
determine the shear bond strength properties of
acrylic resins is highly desirable and would allow the
problem to be investigated in a standardized manner
so that results can be directly compared between
centres. However, at the present state of the art,
comparisons of test data differ from one centre to
another and are often attributable to methodology.
For dentine and enamel adhesives, Phillips7 and
Rueggeberg8 highlighted the variables in conducting
adhesive testing, including shear or tensile stress,
design of the testing apparatus and alignment of the
specimens during testing. Bond strength tests
currently lack a consistent approach.
Bending tests are thought to be relevant for testing
denture bases as it reflects the loading arrangement
in the clinical context.9,10 Impact tests procedures
have also been used.1,11 Inherent in some of the
methods of flexural testing of denture base polymers
is the inconsistency of the measured tensile strength.
Chitchumnong et al.12 examined three- and four-
point flexural testing methods and found that the
measured fracture loadings were not the same
Australian Dental Journal 1998;43:1.
CV
6%
5%
5%
Fig. 2.–Helical fracture of test sample.
between the three- and four-point tests. It would
seem that the testing of the tensile strength of repair
junctions would be subject to similar inconsistencies
if the above method had been applied.
A torsional method of testing shear strength of
dental materials has been proposed by Stewart et al.5
They highlighted that torsional tests are superior to
the three-point bending tests and diametral tests
particularly in determining the tensile properties of
brittle materials such as ceramics. They suggested
that torsional tests were more accurate and had less
inherent difficulties in specimen preparation. For
instance, the torsional test is less dependent on
parallelism and specimen dimensions than diametral
or three-point bending tests. This method, therefore,
offers more consistent testing and ease in specimen
fabrication. A further advantage of torsional testing
is its closeness to the clinical situation where most
stresses placed on dentures in function are largely
shear rather than purely tensile, compressive or
flexural. The torsional test exerts on the specimen a
stress which is mainly shear but there is also a tensile
component because of the way the force is applied.
Just as in the three- or four-point flexural testing
methods12 where one would need to ensure that the
test samples satisfy the required parameters of
specimen dimensions it is noted here that the length
of the repair junction is probably the only significant
variable for the torsional test for the repair resin.
The specimen diameter may not be an issue here for
the torsional test.5 The consistency of the results of
the current test further suggests the efficacy of the
torsional method and its tolerance to reasonable
specimen genometry variations.
The accuracy and reproducibility of the test
within each sample group, yielding a coefficient of
variation of 6 per cent or less in the present tests is
much less than commonly observed in other bond
strength testing methods.9,12-14 Stewart et al.5 attributed
this to the fact that there is probably less error
introduced in specimen fabrication and the testing
procedure.
7
 While acrylic materials are not usually considered
brittle, nevertheless, for most acrylics there is a
strain rate below which tensile properties are usually
ductile and above which they are considered brittle.
Moreover, dentures often fracture cleanly and the
fracture site can be relocalized showing that brittle
fracture is the primary mode of clinical fractures. In
this test, the fractured sections could easily be
relocalized, implying that brittle fracture had
occurred.
Since all the failures were of the adhesive-cohesive
type, the bond strengths measured are actually a
combination of the bond strength of the repair
material and the bond strength of the repair material
to the denture base. From a clinical perspective, it is
probably immaterial whether the fracture was due to
interface or bulk behaviour, but rather, the overall
performance of the joint.
The mechanical preparation of the surface is also
an important variable which affects bonding.15 For
instance, the effects of surface finish particularly at
the joint can also affect the stress distribution. The
surfaces were therefore carefully prepared to the same
level of finish in the present experiments. The effects
of the surface finish have the same order of magnitude
influence on all the test results. Hence surface finish
is not an issue here when making comparisons among
the three resins tested. Furthermore, interest is not in
the absolute strength but the relative strengths of the
different repair junctions as a whole.
Repair junction length can also be a contributory
factor to repair strength. Probably if the repair
junction were longer than the 3 mm used here, pure
cohesive fracture of the repair resin might occur
instead of mixed fracture. The length of 3 mm
chosen for the repair resin is somewhat arbitrary,
nonetheless, it is uniform as the same length was
used for all specimens and is probably representative
of the distance between the prepared segments of
dentures undergoing repair in the dental laboratory.
The bond strength required should ideally be no
worse than the strength of the base material. The
strongest bond available is therefore the most
desirable. The current results indicate that resin PA
and CK are superior to RR. The Scheffe F-test
showed that the difference in bond strength between
PA and RR, CK and RR are statistically significant
at p<0.05 level. Although PA had a higher mean
bond strength than CK, this difference was not
significant at the p<0.05 level.
The testing procedure employed freshly made
samples and therefore did not take into account clin-
ical modalities such as chemical degradation and
mechanical fatigue failure of the material.4
Conclusion
A comparative study of the bond strengths of
three denture repair materials was carried out using
8 Australian Dental Journal 1998;43:1.
a torsional test method. The results showed that:
(a) Palapress and Caulk resins had significantly
higher bond strengths than Rapid Repair resin.
(b) Rapid Repair resin exhibited the lowest overall
bond strength of the three resins tested.
(c) The torsional test method is a simple and
reliable method for testing of bond strengths for
repair resins.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous
help of Dr G. Stewart in supervising the torsional
tests; and Dr H. M. Tsai for his invaluable
discussions in the preparation of the manuscript.
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Address for correspondence/reprints:
Department of Restorative Dentistry,
The National University of Singapore,
National University Hospital,
5 Lower Kent Ridge Road,
Singapore 119074.