Microstructural effects on Ni-Ti endodontic instruments failure

Abstract
Endodontic treatments consist to eliminate the vascular nervous system of the tooth. The objectives of this treatment are adequate cleaning and shaping the root canals of the tooth. The endodontic treatment is essential to the success of prosthetics therapy and the lifetime of the tooth. The difficulties of endodontic treatments lie in the abruptness of canal curvature. Ni-Ti endodontic instruments were introduced to facilitate instrumentation of curved canals. They are superelastic and flex far more than stainless-steel instruments. Despite the increased flexibility we can observe unexpected fractures of these Ni-Ti files. The purpose of this work is to understand the process history on fracture life. Our results are based on microstructural and mechanical investigations of Ni-Ti engine-driven rotary files : X-ray diffraction, SEM, DSC, microhardness and bending tests. Thus, and as we expected, endodontic files are very work-hardened : there is a high density of defects in the alloy, which will impede the phase transformation. DSC : the phase transformation A/R-Phase is predominant, the martensitic transformation is difficult to observe. The microvickers hardness confirms these observations (dislocations and precipitates). The X-rays show that the experimental peaks are broad, which is typical of a distorted lattice. Moreover, machining resulted in the work hardening of files. Some thermal treatments are involved in promoting some changes in the mechanical properties and transformation characteristics. Annealing around 400°C shows good results : the recovery allows a compromise between an adequate density of defects to see the R-Phase germination and a low density to limit the brittleness of these instruments. The surface state of the endodontic files is an important factor for failures and fractures initiation. In these applications, it is very critical to predict the service life based on the theoretical modeling.