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In the modern era of metal-free minimally-invasive dentistry, there is a growing tendency toward using metal-free restorative alternatives that provide not only excellent aesthetics but also enable superior durability. Fibre-reinforced composite (FRC) is one cost-effective alternative that fulfils the requirements of aesthetics and durability, and offers favourable physico-mechanical properties. Many FRC applications are well-documented in the literature, such as crowns and fixed partial dentures (FPD); however, their clinical implementation is still limited, owing to the lack of significant knowledge about their longevity, deterioration signs, optimum design and overall performance. This in-vitro research aimed to address these uncertainties by investigating the performance of FRC restorations, and the influence of fibre reinforcement on particular physcio-mechanical properties, including surface hardness, edge-strength, shear bond strength, fatigue and wear resistance.Basic testing models were used to investigate the effect of incorporating differently-oriented FRCs on the surface hardness, edge-strength and shear bond strength of particulate-reinforced composite (PRC). The results revealed that the incorporation of FRC significantly enhanced surface hardness (by 12 - 19 %) and edge-strength (by 27 -75 %). However, this incorporation significantly reduced the shear bond strength (SBS) between PRC and other restorative materials, including lithium disilicate ceramic (10.9±3.1 MPa) and Co-Cr metal alloy (12.8±2.3 MPa), compared to the control (15.2±3.6 MPa, 15.0±3.7 MPa). The orientation of FRC was also found to affect the efficiency of reinforcement as bidirectional FRCs exhibited significantly higher hardness (76.8±1.2 VHN), edge-strength (67.7±8.2 N) and SBS (14.1±3.9 MPa) values than unidirectional FRCs (72.4±1.2 VHN, 56.8±5.9 N, 9.8±2.3 MPa).Clinically-relevant testing models, employing accelerated aging techniques, were performed to investigate the fatigue and wear behaviours of anatomically-shaped FRC restorations in-vitro. Direct inlay-retained FRC-FPDs with two framework designs, were tested for their fatigue behaviour and load-bearing capacity. Type-I design (with an additional bidirectional FRC layer incorporated perpendicular to the loading direction) yielded significantly higher fatigue resistance (1144.0±270.9 N) and load-bearing capacity (1598.6±361.8) than Type-II design (with a woven FRC embedded around the pontic core) (716.6±72.1 N, 1125.8±278.2 N, respectively). However, Type-19II design exhibited fewer delamination failures. Both framework design and dynamic fatigue were found to have a significant influence (p |
