The in vitro wear behavior of nanozirconia-filled dental composite in food slurry condition

The purpose of this investigation was to analyze the effect of adding different weight fraction of nanozirconia on wear characteristics of resin-based dental composite. The dental composites were fabricated by adding (0–3 wt.%) of silane-modified nanozirconia particles into a monomer system (50 wt.% bisphenol-A glycidyl methacrylate, 49 wt.% tri-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, 0.2 wt.% Camphorquinone, and 0.8 wt.% ethyl 4 dimethyl amino benzoate). The experiments were conducted based on steady state condition and Taguchi’s orthogonal design in a dental wear simulator. A theoretical model was proposed for wear assessment and validated with the experimental results. The findings of the experiments indicated that the composite with 3 wt.% nanozirconia demonstrated lowest volumetric wear rate.