Skip to main content
We propose a variational approach that employs a generalized principle of virtual work to estimate both the mechanical response and the changes in living bone tissue during the remodeling process. This approach provides an explanation for... more
We propose a variational approach that employs a generalized principle of virtual work to estimate both the mechanical response and the changes in living bone tissue during the remodeling process. This approach provides an explanation for the adaptive regulation of the bone substructure in the context of orthotropic material symmetry. We specifically focus upon the crucial gradual adjustment of bone tissue as a structural material that adapts its mechanical features, such as materials stiffnesses and microstructure, in response to the evolving loading conditions. We postulate that the evolution process relies on a feedback mechanism involving multiple stimulus signals. The mechanical and remodeling behavior of bone tissue is clearly a complex process that is difficult to describe within the framework of classical continuum theories. For this reason, a generalized continuum elastic theory is employed as a proper mathematical context for an adequate description of the examined phenome...
The low-viscosity adhesive that is used to bond composite restorative materials to the tooth is readily damaged by acids, enzymes, and oral fluids. Bacteria infiltrate the resulting gaps at the composite/tooth interface, demineralize the... more
The low-viscosity adhesive that is used to bond composite restorative materials to the tooth is readily damaged by acids, enzymes, and oral fluids. Bacteria infiltrate the resulting gaps at the composite/tooth interface, demineralize the tooth, and further erode the adhesive. This paper presents the preparation and characterization of a low-crosslink-density hydrophilic adhesive that capitalizes on sol-gel reactions and free-radical polymerization to resist hydrolysis and provide enhanced mechanical properties in wet environments. Polymerization behavior, water sorption, and leachates were investigated. Dynamic mechanical analyses (DMA) were conducted using water-saturated adhesives to mimic load transfer in wet conditions. Data from all tests were analyzed using appropriate statistical tests (α = 0.05). The degree of conversion was comparable for experimental and control adhesives at 88.3 and 84.3%, respectively. HEMA leachate was significantly lower for the experimental (2.9 wt%) ...
The low-viscosity adhesive that is used to bond composite restorative materials to the tooth is readily damaged by acids, enzymes, and oral fluids. Bacteria infiltrate the resulting gaps at the composite/tooth interface, demineralize the... more
The low-viscosity adhesive that is used to bond composite restorative materials to the tooth is readily damaged by acids, enzymes, and oral fluids. Bacteria infiltrate the resulting gaps at the composite/tooth interface, demineralize the tooth, and further erode the adhesive. This paper presents the preparation and characterization of a low-crosslink-density hydrophilic adhesive that capitalizes on sol-gel reactions and free-radical polymerization to resist hydrolysis and provide enhanced mechanical properties in wet environments. Polymerization behavior, water sorption, and leachates were investigated. Dynamic mechanical analyses (DMA) were conducted using water-saturated adhesives to mimic load transfer in wet conditions. Data from all tests were analyzed using appropriate statistical tests (α = 0.05). The degree of conversion was comparable for experimental and control adhesives at 88.3 and 84.3%, respectively. HEMA leachate was significantly lower for the experimental (2.9 wt%) ...
The interfaces that biological tissues form with biomaterials are invariably defective and frequently the location where failure initiates. Characterizing the phenomena that lead to failure is confounded by several factors including... more
The interfaces that biological tissues form with biomaterials are invariably defective and frequently the location where failure initiates. Characterizing the phenomena that lead to failure is confounded by several factors including heterogeneous material/tissue interfaces. To seamlessly analyze across these diverse structures presents a wealth of analytical challenges. This study aims to develop a molecular-level understanding of a peptide-functionalized adhesive/collagen hybrid biomaterial using Raman spectroscopy combined with chemometrics approach. An engineered hydroxyapatite-binding peptide (HABP) was copolymerized in dentin adhesive and dentin was demineralized to provide collagen matrices that were partially infiltrated with the peptide-functionalized adhesive. Partial infiltration led to pockets of exposed collagen—a condition that simulates defects in adhesive/dentin interfaces. The spectroscopic results indicate that co-polymerizable HABP tethered to the adhesive promoted...
It is evident that biocomposites, specifically mineralized Type‐I collagen fibrils, have strong mechanical properties, such as a desirable combination of elastic modulus, fracture toughness, and fracture strength. The mineral... more
It is evident that biocomposites, specifically mineralized Type‐I collagen fibrils, have strong mechanical properties, such as a desirable combination of elastic modulus, fracture toughness, and fracture strength. The mineral Hydroxyapatite [Hap] by itself is stiffer, and it is not clear whether a collagen fiber by itself has a lower breaking strength than the mineralized fiber. Hence, the objective of this paper is to develop, outline, apply, and demonstrate issues involving a new nano explicit finite element based framework, by which the mechanical behavior of mineralized collagen fibrils and their constituents can be studied. A multi‐scale virtual internal bond model is used to model the material behavior and failure of such biocomposites. In this research two models have been studied. The first model attempts to illustrate the hypothesis that materials are less sensitive to flaws at nanoscale and the second model studies the mechanical behavior of a nano sized dahlite mineral cr...
In this study, deformation and failure mechanisms of mineralized tissue (bone) were investigated both experimentally and computationally by performing diametral compression tests on millimetric disk specimens and conducting finite element... more
In this study, deformation and failure mechanisms of mineralized tissue (bone) were investigated both experimentally and computationally by performing diametral compression tests on millimetric disk specimens and conducting finite element analysis in which a granular micromechanics-based nonlinear user-defined material model is implemented. The force–displacement relationship obtained in the simulation agreed well with the experimental results. The simulation was also able to capture location of the failure initiation observed in the experiment, which is inside out from the hole along the loading axis. Furthermore, propagation of micro-sized cracks into failure was observed both in the experiment using simultaneous slow-motion microscopy imaging and in the simulation analyzing the local distortion and local volume change within the specimen. The anisotropy evolution was found to be significant around the hole along the loading axis by evaluating the anisotropy index computed using f...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
While homogenization of periodic linear elastic structures is now a well-known procedure when the stiffness of the material varies inside fixed bounds, no homogenization formula is known which enables to compute the effective properties... more
While homogenization of periodic linear elastic structures is now a well-known procedure when the stiffness of the material varies inside fixed bounds, no homogenization formula is known which enables to compute the effective properties of highly contrasted structures. Examples have been given in which the effective energy involves the strain-gradient but no general formula provides this strain-gradient dependence. Some formulas have been proposed which involve such terms and provide a small correction to the classical effective energy still when the stiffness of the material varies inside fixed bounds. The goal of this paper is to check the applicability of these formulas for highly contrasted structures. To that aim we focus on structures whose limit energy is already known and we compare the energies given by (i) the convergence results, (ii) the corrective formulas and (iii) by a direct numerical simulation of the complete structure. Institut de Mathématiques de Toulon, Universi...
One of the most interesting challenges in the modern theory of materials consists in the determination of those microstructures which produce, at the macro-level, a class of metamaterials whose elastic range is many orders of magnitude... more
One of the most interesting challenges in the modern theory of materials consists in the determination of those microstructures which produce, at the macro-level, a class of metamaterials whose elastic range is many orders of magnitude wider than the one exhibited by 'standard' materials. In dell'Isola et al. (2015 Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Physik66, 3473-3498. (doi:10.1007/s00033-015-0556-4)), it was proved that, with a pantographic microstructure constituted by 'long' micro-beams it is possible to obtain metamaterials whose elastic range spans up to an elongation exceeding 30%. In this paper, we demonstrate that the same behaviour can be obtained by means of an internal microstructure based on a king post motif. This solution shows many advantages: it involves only microbeams; all constituting beams are undergoing only extension or compression; all internal constraints are terminal pivots. While the elastic deformation energy can be determined a...
Location localization technology is used in a number of industrial and civil applications. Real time location localization accuracy is highly dependent on the quality of the distance measurements and efficiency of solving the localization... more
Location localization technology is used in a number of industrial and civil applications. Real time location localization accuracy is highly dependent on the quality of the distance measurements and efficiency of solving the localization equations. In this paper, we provide a novel approach to solve the nonlinear localization equations efficiently and simultaneously eliminate the bad measurement data in range-based systems. A geometric intersection model was developed to narrow the target search area, where Newton's Method and the Direct Search Method are used to search for the unknown position. Not only does the geometric intersection model offer a small bounded search domain for Newton's Method and the Direct Search Method, but also it can self-correct bad measurement data. The Direct Search Method is useful for the coarse localization or small target search domain, while the Newton's Method can be used for accurate localization. For accurate localization, by utilizin...
ABSTRACT: The shallow foundation design typically involves two-steps:(1) the ultimate bearing capacity calculation based upon general bearing capacity theories and (2) the maximum contact pressure calculation that produces an allowable... more
ABSTRACT: The shallow foundation design typically involves two-steps:(1) the ultimate bearing capacity calculation based upon general bearing capacity theories and (2) the maximum contact pressure calculation that produces an allowable total settlement. The ...
The objective of this study was to explore the effect of lysine integration to dental adhesives with respect to the polymerization kinetics, neutralization capacities in the acidic microenvironment, dynamic mechanical properties, and... more
The objective of this study was to explore the effect of lysine integration to dental adhesives with respect to the polymerization kinetics, neutralization capacities in the acidic microenvironment, dynamic mechanical properties, and thermal properties. Lysine was incorporated into liquid resin formulations at 2.5 and 5.0wt % with additional water/ethanol co-solvents. The co-monomer system contained 2-hydroxyethyl-methacrylate (HEMA) and Bisphenol A glycerolate dimethacrylate (BisGMA) with a mass ratio of 45/55. The kinetics of photopolymerization, neutralization capacities, lysine-leaching, dynamic mechanical properties and thermal properties of the control and experimental adhesives were analyzed. The degree of conversion of the experimental adhesive was increased substantially at 2.5wt% lysine as compared to the control. The experimental polymers provided acute neutralization of the acidic microenvironment. Approximately half of the lysine was released from the polymer network wi...
In the United States, composites accounted for nearly 70% of the 173.2 million composite and amalgam restorations placed in 2006 (Kingman et al., 2012), and it is likely that the use of composite will continue to increase as dentists... more
In the United States, composites accounted for nearly 70% of the 173.2 million composite and amalgam restorations placed in 2006 (Kingman et al., 2012), and it is likely that the use of composite will continue to increase as dentists phase out dental amalgam. This trend is not, however, without consequences. The failure rate of composite restorations is double that of amalgam (Ferracane, 2013). Composite restorations accumulate more biofilm, experience more secondary decay, and require more frequent replacement. In vivo biodegradation of the adhesive bond at the composite-tooth interface is a major contributor to the cascade of events leading to restoration failure. Binding by proteins, particularly gp340, from the salivary pellicle leads to biofilm attachment, which accelerates degradation of the interfacial bond and demineralization of the tooth by recruiting the pioneer bacterium Streptococcus mutans to the surface. Bacterial production of lactic acid lowers the pH of the oral mi...
The Cattaneo–Mindlin solutions of contact between elastic spheres and their recent extensions do not consider the sequential application of arbitrarily directed shear forces in the contact tangential plane. For this loading condition, the... more
The Cattaneo–Mindlin solutions of contact between elastic spheres and their recent extensions do not consider the sequential application of arbitrarily directed shear forces in the contact tangential plane. For this loading condition, the contact tractions simultaneously undergo loading and unloading. This article presents a path-dependent analysis wherein we use superposition at each loading step to obtain the contact tangential traction, and, subsequently the tangential displacement and compliance. The methodology is illustrated by example calculation of contact shear force–displacement relationship, which shows the formation of hysteretic loop and the noncoaxiality of the shear forces and displacements.
A finite element (FE) model has been developed based upon the recently measured micro-scale morphological, chemical and mechanical properties of dentin–adhesive (d–a) interfaces using confocal Raman microspectroscopy and scanning acoustic... more
A finite element (FE) model has been developed based upon the recently measured micro-scale morphological, chemical and mechanical properties of dentin–adhesive (d–a) interfaces using confocal Raman microspectroscopy and scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM). The results computed from this FE model indicated that the stress distributions and concentrations are affected by the micro-scale elastic properties of various phases composing the d–a interface. However, these computations were performed assuming isotropic material properties for the d–a interface. The d–a interface components, such as the peritubular and intertubular dentin, the partially demineralized dentin and the so-called ‘hybrid layer’ adhesive-collagen composite, are probably anisotropic. In this paper, the FE model is extended to account for the probable anisotropic properties of these d–a interface phases. A parametric study is performed to study the effect of anisotropy on the micromechanical stress distributions in t...

And 110 more