Effect of Location and Extent of Glass Fiber Reinforcement on the Flexural Properties of Complete Denture

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Muhammad Haseeb Rana et al.

Abstract

Background- Breakage of complete dentures made of acrylic resins is one of the most unsolvable difficulties in prosthodontics. Reinforcement of complete dentures made of resins with metal wire has been done in the past to toughen them up and prevent them from breaking in clinical situations. Over the last two decades, glass fibres have been employed to enhance resin-based full dentures. During this time, there were few studies that looked at both glass fibre and metal reinforcement. However, till now there has been no study focussing on the effect of extent and location of fibres of glass for strengthening of the acrylic based complete dentures on the flexural properties of these dentures. This study was conducted with an objective of evaluating the effect of location and extent of the glass fibre reinforcement in the flexural properties of the complete dentures prepared from acrylic resin.


Materials and Methods- It was an in vitro study where evaluation was carried out for the effect of the extent and location of the reinforcement with twenty µm glass fibres in the dentures prepared with acrylic resins. The glass fibres were implanted in the complete denture base resin while it was in doughy phase. They were positioned in the four different locations. These locations were i) ridge lap region, ii) palate region in the anterior region, iii) middle region of the denture, iii) anterior and posterior locations of the palate in the denture.  The extent of glass fibres reinforcement was studied at four extent of 12%, 16%, 21% and the 31%. This evaluation was carried out with the help of load testing machine (Tokyo, Japan).The cross speed adjusted was 5.0 mm/ minute. There was ball attachment of diameter 25 mm to apply flexural load on each study specimen.


Results- It was observed that there was significant difference in reinforcement conditions when compared with condition of no reinforcement. But the difference was non significant when there was comparison among reinforcement at four different location and four different on evaluation of the flexural load corresponding to the proportional limit, efficiency of strengthening by the fibres of glass in comparison to the complete dentures having no reinforcement and flexural deflection found at the 100-N loading point


Conclusion- Within the limits of this study it was concluded that glass fibre reinforcement in the acrylic based complete dentures improves the flexural properties but effect of extent and location of glass reinforced fibres on the flexural properties were non significant.

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