21

Mechanical Properties of
Tooth Structures
Roberto De Santis, Luigi Ambrosio, and Luigi Nicolais

21.1. Introduction

Enamel, dentine, cementum, and pulp are the dental tissues. These four
materials are joined as shown in Figure 21.1 and characterize the external
and internal junctions, CEJ and DEJ, respectively (cementum–enamel and
dentine–enamel junctions). The enamel, dentine, and cementum mineralized
structures with the bone structure are the connective hard tissues.
Dentine is the bulk of a tooth and, as compact bone material, is
formed by an inorganic mineral part (hydroxyapatite) and an organic
matrix (mainly formed by collagen). Type I fibrillar collagen is the main
constituent of bone and the dentine extracellular matrix. However, chroma-
tography tests suggest a different cross-link distribution between bone and
dentine collagen (Kuboky and Mechanic, 1982). Dentinal tubules across
dentine (Veis, 1996) and the intertubular and intratubular dentine is
distinguished (ITD and PTD, respectively).
Dentinal tubules course through dentine following an S-shaped curva-
ture and change their diameter. Lateral branches of tubules with smaller
diameter complete the tubules’ network beside the DEJ (Cagidiaco and
Ferrari, 1995). There is a different distribution of dentinal tubules and
diameters in the P-DEJ direction (Garberoglio and Brannstrom, 1976).
Tubules are wider and more numerous near the pulp.
Enamel covers the crown of the tooth and its structure consists of a
tightly packed mass of hydroxyapatite crystals which are organized in highly

Roberto De Santis, Luigi Ambrosio, and Luigi Nicolais Institute of Composite

Materials Technology C.N.R., and C.R.I.B., University of Naples, “Federico II”, Piazzale
Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy.
Integrated Biomaterials Science, edited by R. Barbucci. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers,
New York, 2002.

589
590 Roberto De Santis et al.

oriented patterns (enamel rods). Rods, which extend from the DEJ to
the surface of the enamel, are arranged in circumferential rows around
the main axis of a tooth. Figure 21.2 shows a scanning electron microscopy
(SEM) of enamel and etched enamel (etched with 37% phosphoric acid
for 30 s).
The pulp is the soft tissue of a tooth which is richly innervated.
It occupies the central portion of the tooth which is divided into a cor-
onal pulp chamber and a radicular root canal. The principal cells of the
pulp are the odontoblasts, whose processes extend into dentine, fibroblast,
Mechanical Properties of Tooth Structures 591

mesenchymal cells and cells of connective tissue related to the neural,

vascular, and immune systems. Vessels enter into the pulp through the
apical foramina.
Cementum is the mineralized tissue which covers the root of a tooth;
it is a bone-like structure. This tissue is deposited as a thin layer from the
CEJ to the apex of the tooth; the thickness of this layer is higher at the apex.
Cementoblasts and cementocytes are the cells of cementum which are
similar to the osteoblasts and osteocytes of bone; however, unlike bone,
cementum is avascular and incapable of remodeling. Cementum anchors the
tooth to the surrounding alveolar bone through the periodontal ligament.
The periodontal ligament system is the soft connective tissue made
of fibers spanning from the cement of the root to the alveolar bone fol-
lowing an obliquely cervical direction. The periodontal ligament charac-
terizes the articulation between the tooth and bone; during the masticatory
functions the periodontal ligaments act as a natural shock absorbing
system.
Physical Properties. Table 21.1 shows physical properties of connect-
ive hard tissues. The values of densities (Berghash and Hodge, 1940)
increase in the bone–teeth structure direction, reflecting the mineral content
increase in the same direction. Dentine and enamel are 65% and 95-98%
mineralized, respectively (mature enamel is not a living tissue). This density
distribution is consistent with homogeneous model structures and mechan-
ical properties.
Thermal properties suggest that enamel has a higher heat transfer rate
than dentine. The overall natural organization of dentine and enamel
reflects the best way of joining two materials, working in a hostile environ-
ment (the oral environment), in order to optimize their thermomechanical
functions.
592 Roberto De Santis et al.

Heterogeneity of natural tissue and the anisotropy in their mechanical

behaviors are a fact regarded as a source for high-performance engineering
designs. However, modes of failure and bond strengths depend on the mode
of testing, and this is a problem that needs to be resolved if strength and
bond strength data are to be believed (Stanley, 1990; Drummond et al.,
1996; van Noort, 1998).

21.2. Mechanical Properties

Dentine, as compact bone, is a heterogeneous multiphase material

which exhibits a multiscale composite structure; thus mechanical properties
depend on the testing conditions. Classical mechanical tests (macroscopic
tests in tension, compression, torsion, flexion, etc.) on connective tissue
specimens suggest a minimum cross-sectional area of Such speci-
mens contain various Haversian systems (Reilly et al., 1974) and thus
provide significant data. Unfortunately this cross-sectional value is high if
compared to the average of overall dentine dimensions, preventing the
distinguishing of material properties.
Human third molars and the diaphyses of femoral compact bone have
been the main source for material research because of their geometrical
constraints.
Reductions in cross-sectional values lead to micromechanical tests
whose results suggested that there is no relation between the applied load
and the cross-sectional area (Sano et al., 1994).
Indentation tests, by means of atomic force microscopes (AFM), are
an alternative to classical micromechanical testing (Xu et al., 1998). Using
AFM it has been possible to apply loads in the range of to 100 N
through the tip of the indenter (Balooch et al., 1998).

21.2.1. Static Mechanical Properties

Figure 21.3 presents typical stress–strain curves of dentine and com-
pact bone. Young’s moduli of hydroxyapatite and collagen are 114 GPa and
1.2 GPa, respectively, so upper and lower bounds of the elastic modulus of
hard tissues may be derived from composite models where the mineral
crystal is the reinforcement while the surrounding collagen is the matrix
phase.
The averaged values of the elastic modulus of dentine (Craig et al.,
1961) and enamel (van Meerbeek et al., 1993; Willems et al., 1993) are
10–20 GPa and 75–90 GPa, respectively.
Mechanical Properties of Tooth Structures 593

The anisotropy in the mechanical properties of bone derives from the

ultrastructural organization of collagen fibrils and mineral crystals within
the osteons and the lamellar microstructure. The partial alignment of the
osteons in the longitudinal direction of long bones makes this the stiffer and
stronger axis of the material. This microstructure organization controls the
relationship between loading conditions and fracture patterns in bone. The
elastic modulus of femoral compact bone (Bonfield and Grypass, 1977)
varies from 14 GPa to 17 GPa (measured in the longitudinal direction of the
femur). The average mechanical properties of compact femoral bone and
dentine (Table 21.2) show that the elastic modulus of dentine is similar to
that of cortical bone. However, the different hydroxyapatite–collagen net-
work grants higher compression performances to dentine and higher tensile
performances to compact bone (Figure 21.3).
The collagen contribution to the elastic modulus of enamel is negli-
gible; even viscoelastic properties do not change in the pulp DEJ direction.
Instead, dentine strength, toughness, and bonding performances are depend-
ent on the collagenic network properties.
Based on measured Young’s moduli of 30 GPa for PTD and 15 GPa
for ITD and the tubule density in dentine, a slight variation was found in
the axial and transverse shear moduli with position in the tooth and the
mean values were 16 GPa and 6.2 GPa for the Young’s modulus and shear
modulus, respectively (Kinney et al., 1999).
Figure 21.4 presents the effect of tubule organization (Garberoglio and
Brannstrom, 1976) on shear strength (measured with dentine specimens of
594 Roberto De Santis et al.

5 x 1 x 1 mm) (Watanabe et al., 1996), where the x, y, and z directions are

shown in Figure 21.1. It can be seen that the shear strength increases in the
pulp–enamel direction while tubule density and diameter decrease in the
same direction.
Microtensile tests assess local variation in dentine bonding strength
(van Noort, 1998). These tests showed that bond strength to root dentine is
lower than that to coronal dentine (Yoshiyama et al., 1996). Micromechani-
cal tests are important, especially when the specimen sizes are constrained.
Mechanical Properties of Tooth Structures 595

21.2.2. Hardness

Investigations using a modified atomic-force microscope suggest that

the hardness of hydrated PTD and ITD is 2.3 ± 0.3 GPa and 0.5 ± 0.1 GPa,
respectively (Kinney et al., 1996a). The hardness of ITD increased in the
pulp–DEJ direction (0.15 ± 0.03 to 0.50 ± 0.02 GPa, respectively) while that
of PTD had a homogeneous distribution (Kinney et al., 1996b).
The impression size in dentine using loads of the order of 10 mN is
similar to heterogeneities such us enamel rods or dentinal tubules, preven-
ting one from distinguishing material properties (Xu et al., 1998). This load,
applied through a nano-indentator, suggested an elastic modulus of
19.3±2.3 GPa and 90.6 + 16.1 GPa for dentine (van Meerbeek et al., 1993)
and enamel (Willems et al., 1993), respectively. By using higher loads (2 to
50 N) the resulting elastic modulus of dentine was 20±2 GPa and the
anisotropy in the mechanical properties of enamel were related to micro-
structural organization: the crack propagating toward the DEJ arrests at
DEJ (Xu et al., 1998).
The averaged values of Vickers’ hardness of dentine and enamel are
and respectively (Willems et al., 1992;
Forss et al., 1991).

21.2.3. Fracture Toughness

Linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) have been applied to bone
and dentine in order to characterize its resistance to fracture. The stress
intensity factor K characterizes the stress amplification at the crack tip of a
loaded material. According to LEFM each material has a critical stress
intensity factor also known as fracture toughness. Fracture occurs when
K reaches the value
The fracture toughness reflects the ability of a material to resist crack
initiation and propagation. The critical value is a material characteristic,
which provides a basis for predicting the onset of unstable crack propaga-
tion as a function of stress and crack dimensions (Suresh, 1991; Rooke,
1993).
In the last decades LEFM and mechanical tests have been used to
evaluate the fracture toughness of cortical bone and dentine according to
mode I fracture (crack extension in which the tensile stresses, acting normal
to crack faces, are responsible for crack propagation). Toughness was
evaluated in the direction parallel to the long axis of a long bone (longitudi-
nal direction) and in the direction parallel to dentinal tubules according to
a variety of precracked specimens: the compact tension specimen (CT)
596 Roberto De Santis et al.

(Bonfield and Datta, 1976; Behiri and Bonfield, 1984; Vashishth et al., 1997;
Norman et al., 1995, 1996), the single edge notched specimen (SEN) (Melvin
and Evans, 1973; Moyle and Gavens, 1986), the center notched cylindrical
specimen (CNC) (Bonfield, 1987), the compact sandwich specimens (Wang
and Agrawal, 1996), and the 3-point bending specimen (Robertson et al.,
1978). The aim of these investigations is propagation rather than initiation
of the crack.
The CT geometry has proven to be the most useful for studying bone
fracture mechanics in the longitudinal direction, even if the dimension
requirement (ASTM E 399-72, 1983) was difficult to match with connective
tissues specimens. Plane strain fracture toughness using CT specimens
of coronal dentine, with DT parallel to the notch plane, suggested a value
of (standard deviation 0.33) (El Mowafy and Watts, 1986).
The main features of the CNT specimen are its geometry and the
V-shaped notch. The latter constrains the crack to a steady-state propaga-
tion in the chevron-notch ligament (ASTM B 771-87, 1987) while the former
allows a diameter 40% smaller than the thickness of a standard CT (Barker,
1997). These features are essential to distinguish the anisotropy in the
fracture properties of a material like bone and dentine. Moreover, by using
the CNT geometry, fracture toughness is computed as a function of the
maximum load and the specimen’s geometry:

where A is a CNT constant (A = 20.8 for ASTM specimens), B is the

Mechanical Properties of Tooth Structures 597

diameter, and v is Poisson’s ratio. Figure 21.5 shows the mechanical

behavior of CNT short-rod specimens of dentine and bone.
A CNT short-bar bovine specimen (with the notch tip in enamel)
suggested that the lower boundary value of and (critical strain energy
release), in the direction perpendicular to the DEJ, are
and respectively (Lin and Douglas, 1994a); of the
bonding system–dentine interface is one order of magnitude lower (Lin and
Douglas, 1994b).
The value of measured by using CNT short-rod specimens of a
dentine–bonding system, with the interface positioned in the notch plane,
suggests a range of 0.20 to (a significant lower limit of
fracture toughness is reached in a deep dentine–bonding system interface)
(Tam and Yim, 1997).
The fracture toughness of dentine is midway in the range
observed for cortical bone and is at least one order of magnitude
greater than the value for dentine-restorative materials.

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