The creep compliance of dental amalgam in the stress range of 20-80 MPa.

The continuous compressive creep curves of four distinct types of one-week-old dental amalgam were monitored for one day on a specially designed mini-specimen creep apparatus. Creep conditions included three different applied constant stress levels (20, 40, and 80 MPa), and temperatures ranging from 0 degrees C to 60 degrees C. To compensate for changing dimensions at high creep strains, the data was converted to terms of compressive creep compliance. For all types of dental amalgam, compressive creep increased both with increased applied stress and with increased test temperature. The two high copper systems evaluated appear to approach a steady-state creep condition up to the highest temperatures tested, but the two conventional amalgams appear to change their creep exponent precipitously at temperatures above 45 degrees C.