Effect of thermocycling on flexural strength and weibull statistics of machinable glass-ceramic and composite resin.

To evaluate the durability of machinable dental restorative materials, this study performed an experiment to evaluate the flexural strength and Weibull statistics of a machinable lithium disilicate glass-ceramic and a machinable composite resin after being thermocycled for certain cycles. A total of 40 bar-shape specimens of were prepared with the dimension of 20 mm × 4 mm × 2 mm, which were divided into four groups of 10 specimens. Ten specimens of machinable lithium disilicate glass-ceramic (IPS e.max CAD, Ivoclar Vivadent, Liechtenstein) and 10 specimens of machinable composite resin (Paradigm MZ 100, 3M ESPE, USA) were subjected to 3-point flexural strength test. Other 10 specimens of each material were thermocycled between water temperature of 5 and 55 °C for 10,000 cycles. After that, they were tested using 3-point flexural strength test. Statistical analysis was performed using two-way analysis of variance and Tukey multiple comparisons. Weibull analysis was performed to evaluate the reliability of the strength. Means of strength and their standard deviation were: thermocycled IPS e.max CAD 389.10 (50.75), non-thermocycled IPS e.max CAD 349.96 (38.34), thermocycled Paradigm MZ 100 157.51 (12.85), non-thermocycled Paradigm MZ 100 153.33 (19.97). Within each material group, there was no significant difference in flexural strength between thermocycled and non-thermocycled specimens. Considering the Weibull analysis, there was no statistical difference of Weibull modulus in all experimental groups. Within the limitation of this study, the results showed that there was no significant effect of themocycling on flexural strength and Weibull modulus of a machinable glass-ceramic and a machinable composite resin.