Delayed crack development in porcelain due to incompatibility stress.

Delayed failure of metal-ceramic restorations due to static fatigue can occur when residual tensile stress is present in porcelain, even in the absence of intra-oral forces. Fixed-partial-denture (FPD) specimens and semicircular arch specimens with gapped cross-arch segments were employed to characterize the potential of two incompatible metal-ceramic systems for producing delayed crack development and to determine the relative sensitivity of these test designs as monitors of incompatibility stresses which resulted from thermal contraction differences between a nickel-chromium alloy and three experimental porcelains. The arch specimens were judged to be more suitable for analysis of residual stresses because of the larger magnitude of gap changes at each procedural change. However, the FPD specimens exhibited earlier evidence of delayed crack growth in porcelain when the thermal contraction coefficient of the metal exceeded that of the porcelain by either 1.7 X 10(-6)/degrees C or 2.2 X 10(-6)/degrees C. For these two states of incompatibility, the agreement between experimental gap values for the arch specimens and the gap values predicted from composite strip equations was excellent.