The absorption of water by denture base materials is important because it is directly related with dimensional stability of dental material. In this study, water absorption of denture base materials reinforced with different type of dental fiber systems was compared. The samples were prepared from heat-polymerized and microwave polymerized denture base resins and reinforced with different dental fiber systems. Five different reinforcement materials were used in this study, namely, (1) no fiber (control group), (2) plasma-treated crosslinked polyethylene fibers, (3) plasma-treated woven polyethylene fibers (4) porous polymer preimpregnated continuous unidirectional glass fibers, and (5) woven glass fibers. The water absorption calculations were done for the periods of 7, 14, 21, and 30 days of water immersion and in total 100 specimens were tested. The statistical analysis via analysis of variance and Duncan multiple comparison tests have shown that the fiber reinforcement significantly influence the water absorption. Moreover, the results have shown that water absorption of denture base polymers is higher when the specimens are reinforced with the fiber systems.

The conversion of monomer to its polymer may not be complete and residual monomer is left over in the polymeric matrix; this, in turn, affects the properties of the polymeric matrix. In this study, we wanted to compare residual monomer content of the unreinforced conventional heat‐polymerized and microwave‐polymerized acrylic resins with those of fiber‐reinforced ones. High performance liquid chromatography was used for the determination of the residual monomer content. Statistical analysis of the results was carried out with a confidence level of 95%. It was observed that conventional heat‐polymerized denture base resin resulted in a relatively higher residual monomer content than the microwaved one. Conventional heat‐polymerized denture base resin with fiber reinforcement caused an increase in the residual monomer content. Furthermore, the change in the residual monomer content of microwave‐polymerized denture base resin with fiber reinforcement was not statistically significant compared with no fiber reinforcement. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012

In this study, the functional forces acting on maxillary complete dentures during mastication and swallowing were determined from three different locations by means of strain gauges. It was found that the functional forces caused by swallowing are quite marked in themselves and can cause deformation of the denture base resulting in undesirable force on the denture-bearing tissues.