Microshear fatigue testing of tooth/adhesive interfaces
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Quasistatic Mechanical Testing for Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Occlusal Veneers Cemented to Milled Dentin Analog Material
Published on: December 20, 2024
1Lab Dental Materials, University of Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium. marc.braem@ua.ac.be
Purpose:
The objective of the present study was to determine the fatigue resistance of several contemporary dentin adhesives as well as a resin-modified glass-ionomer cement.
Materials And Methods:
Cyclic loading of the adhesive interface was achieved by a microshear fatigue setup following a staircase approach, where the stress level at which 50% of the specimens fail after 10(4) cycles was calculated as the median microshear fatigue resistance (muSFR).
Results:
For all products tested, the muSFR was lower than the microshear strength. A wide spread in muSFR was observed, ranging from 24% to 76% of the quasi-static microshear strength, irrespective of the type of adhesive used.
Conclusion:
The results of this study show that the microshear test setup is a discriminative and reproducible way of testing tooth/adhesive interfaces, even at relatively low stresses. The results clearly indicate that such interfaces are vulnerable to progressive damage by cyclic loads. Further, at present there is not one bonding approach, whether "total etch" or "self-etching", that consistently yields higher fatigue resistance: the product factor seems to be of primary importance.
