Numerical analysis of the mechanical behavior of ceramic dental implants based on Ce-TZP/Al2O3 composite

This study aimed to identify the potential use of the ceramic composite ZrO2(CeO2)-Al2O3 as a dental implant due to its intrinsic geometry and different masticatory loads based on finite element simulations. Ceramic samples were sintered at 1500 °C-2h, and characterized: The mechanical properties of the ceramic composite (hardness, fracture toughness, flexural strength, Young's Modulus, and Poisson ratio) were determined, in addition to the relative density and its structural characteristics. Commercial dental implant designs (incisal and third-molar) on CAD models were used in this study as an initial implant geometry applied in a typical simulated mandible anatomy. Finite element models were generated for implant geometries using CAD and CAE techniques. Loading cases were considered based on different intensities (100-500 N) and orientation angles to the implant axis (0° and 45°) to reproduce human masticatory conditions. For comparison purposes, the numerical predictions were compared with finite element simulations of gold-standard titanium implants. Ce-TZP/Al2O3 sintered ceramics showed flexural strength of 952.6 ± 88 MPa, hardness and fracture toughness of 1427 ± 46 HV and 11.3 ± 0.4 MPa m1/2, respectively, beside Young's modulus of 228.3 ± 65 GPa and Poisson ratio of 0.28. For both Ce-TZP/Al2O3 dental implant geometries, the implant prototypes showed adequate mechanical behavior regardless of the masticatory load value or the orientation angle applied in the simulations: All finite element predictions are lower than the values established by Mohr Coulomb's failure criterion, allowing the feasibility, preliminarily, of the proposed ceramics for dental implant applications without fracture risk.