How to simulate wear?: Overview of existing methods

Objectives The aim of the overview is to critically analyse the contributing factors to the biological wear process and to screen the wear simulators in dentistry for their capacity to mimic the wear conditions. An overview of the types of wear, grouped as biotribocorrosion, combined with a description of the different wear simulating devices will allow us to better understand the multifactorial nature of wear. Methods A search on keywords highlights the most common in-vitro wear simulators and their use in the laboratories for various simulation applications. Results Wear is a complex process that can hardly be simulated while controlling all variables. Especially the extrapolation of the in-vitro wear results to the in-vivo situation is difficult because there is a lot of interplay with biological factors that are difficult to mimic. Significance It is not the degree of sophistication, but the right mix of controllable variables that will make a wear simulator predictive.