We report the early failure, at a mean of 37 months, of 17 femoral prostheses due to aseptic loosening at the cement-bone interface. In every case the prosthesis had been manufactured with a surface coating designed to enhance the strength of the cement-prosthesis interface. It is postulated that improving the bond at the cement-prosthesis interface may transfer increased stress to the cement-b...

The security of many computer systems hinges on the secrecy of a single word – if an adversary obtains knowledge of a password, they will gain access to the resources controlled by this password. Human users are the ‘weakest link’ in password control, due to our propensity to reuse passwords and to create weak ones. Policies which forbid such unsafe password practices are often violated, even i...

We formulate a theoretical model of the shear failure of a thin film tethered to a rigid substrate. The interface between film and substrate is modeled as a cohesive layer with randomly fluctuating shear strength/fracture energy. We demonstrate that, on scales large compared with the film thickness, the internal shear stresses acting on the interface can be approximated by a second-order gradie...

Tensile bond strength and failure location were evaluated in vitro for three types of direct bonding cements (unfilled, low filled, and highly filled) with three types of brackets (polycarbonate, stainless steel, and ceramic) using natural teeth and plastic as substrates. An unfilled acrylic cement gave the highest values of bond strength for both the plastic and ceramic brackets, whereas a hig...

Resin transfer molding of an inorganic polymer binder was successfully demonstrated in the preparation of ceramic fiber reinforced engine exhaust valves. Unfortunately, in the preliminary processing trials, the resulting composite valves were too brittle for in-engine evaluation. To address this limited toughness, the effectiveness of a modified fiber-matrix interface is investigated through th...

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that the flowable/dentin interface has the weakest bond and highest frequency of failure when a resin-based composite is repaired using a flowable composite. Comparing three specific groups--dentin, flowable composite, and hybrid composite-under the Kruskal-Wallis test showed that the mean bond strength values at the flowable/dentin interface and w...

Many investigators consider the polymethylmethacrylate-bone interface the weakest link in the bone-cement-implant system. Push-out tests, frequently used for in vitro evaluation of the bone-cement interface, produced inconsistent results of shear strength. Therefore, a more reliable model for testing the shear failure of the interface was developed. Better understanding of intrinsic variations ...