Hard (enamel, bone) and soft tissue (PDL, cartilage) mechanics is a field of fundamental importance for the understanding of the cascade of event accompanying the application of force on tooth crown. Complementary to mechanical testing (hardness, modulus), multitechnique characterization of the structure and composition of tissue provides an insight in the effect of stress on the distribution of strain in the tooth crown-root-PDL-bone pathway.
This set of papers has revealed important information on the effect of loading, magnitude of force, and presence of a disease affecting the collagen component of soft tissues, on the strain variation, substantiating the viscoelastic nature of the ligament and the role of collagen-degrading manifestations of connective tissue diseases on the response of tissue to loading
