Abstract
Bone-biomaterial interfaces in orthopaedic and dental prosthetic systems are often exposed to a complex loading environment1–4. However, current testing of interfacial strength of orthopaedic and dental material systems is mainly performed under isolated tensile or shear mode and there are no effective methodologies for assessing the interfacial bonding strength under mixed-mode loading conditions. To address this issue, the present study was performed to develop a fracture mechanics based technique for estimating the mixed-mode fracture toughness of bone-biomaterial interfaces. A sandwich specimen comprising the bone-biomaterial interface was used in this study, and both analytical and numerical analyses were performed in conjunction with an empirical validation using bone to bone and dental cement interfaces.
