The ball-on-disk cyclic wear of CAD/CAM machinable dental composite and ceramic materials

The purpose of this study was to investigate the wear volume and the principal strain of machinable dental composite and ceramics in simulated mastication. A ball-on-disk wear test was performed for 3,000 cycles in water, using nine ball/disk combinations of three commercial CAD/CAM materials: feldspathic, lithium disilicate glass ceramics, and a highly loaded composite material (n = 7 for each combination). The wear volume was optically measured using a digital scanner and analyzed for statistical differences based on the materials (α = 0.05). We used non-linear finite element analysis to calculate the principal strain. The wear volume of the ball was significantly larger than that of the disk when hardness and fracture toughness of the former was lower than that of the latter and vice versa (P < 0.05). The lithium disilicate glass ceramic constantly showed lower wear volume than the opposing antagonist. Except for the same material pairs of feldspathic and composite, the ball or disk specimen that showed a larger wear in the occluding pair coincided with the one with higher maximum strain. It was not possible to predict the magnitude of wear, whereas the result suggested a strong association between the maximum strain and wear volume of the ceramic surface.