Cyclic fatigue behaviour of hydrothermally aged 3Y-TZP ceramics in 4-point bending tests

Fatigue is one of the most important properties to be considered in ceramic dental implants due to cyclic mechanical stresses arising from the chewing process. In this work, the fatigue behaviour of hydrothermally degraded ZrO2-based ceramics stabilized with 3mol% Y2O3 (3Y-TZP) was studied in 4-point bending tests. Samples of 3Y-TZP were compacted (100MPa), sintered at 1475 °C for 2 h, polished and hydrothermally degraded in an autoclave as described in the ISO-13356 standard. The samples were characterized by their relative density, crystalline phase composition, microstructure and surface roughness. The highly dense (>99.6%TD) sintered 3Y-TZP ceramics has only tetragonal t-ZrO2 phase, even after hydrothermal ageing. Furthermore, the ceramic materials presented a Vickers hardness of 12.7±0.2GPa, a fracture toughness of 7.1±0.3MPa•m1/2 and a 4-point bending strength of 940.1±67MPa. Based on the bending test results 5 different stress levels for the fatigue tests were selected and conducted by cyclic 4-point bending obtaining the S-N curve. Weibull statistics was used for the statistical analysis. The fatigue tests indicate that the limit of fatigue resistance of this 3Y-TZP ceramics is around 550MPa, i.e. higher than the limits established in the ISO-13356 standard for the use of Y-TZP ceramics for the manufacture of implants. The fatigue behaviour of the investigated 3Y-TZP ceramics was related to the toughening mechanisms acting in Y-TZP ceramics, such as transformation toughening related to t→m phase transformation and microcracking.