Abstract：Objective To study the fracture toughness of human dentin for crack propagation along and perpendicular to the tubular orientation, respectively and identify the anisotropic cracking resistance curve of human dentin. Methods Cohesive zone model and finite element analysis were adopted to study the fracture behavior of human dentin. Results The results show that the fracture toughness of human dentin increase with crack propagation in a certain range, i.e., human dentin exhibits rising crack growth resistance curve. However, the fracture toughness for cracking along the tubular direction is higher than that in its orthogonal direction. Conclusion Human dentin exhibits anisotropic crack resistance behavior. This study indicates that the results based on cohesive zone modeling agree reasonably well with reported experimental results.
2011, Vol. 32 
