Abrasive erosion definition

The term tooth wear is commonly used to describe the loss of tooth hard tissue due to non-carious causes [1], This encompasses a variety of both chemical and mechanical causes of both intrinsic and extrinsic origin. The term tooth wear is preferred over some of the more precise definitions of individual hard tissue loss mechanisms, because it acknowledges the fact that wear is usually a multifactorial process one mechanism may dominate, but the overall wear is commonly due to the interaction between two or more wear mechanisms. In dentistry, the terms erosion, abrasion, attrition and abfraction are widely used to describe particular mechanisms of hard tissue loss. 

The mechanisms of tooth wear fall into two distinct types those of chemical origin (e.g. erosion) and those of physical origin (e.g. abrasion, attrition). In any individual, both chemical and physical insults to the tooth hard tissue will be present in some form or other, so tooth wear is the combined effect of these insults. Despite the clear definition of a number of distinct tooth wear mechanisms, it is uncommon to find a single wear mechanism present in the... 

Erosion versus Abrasion. The distinction between erosion and abrasion should be clarified, because the term erosion has often been used in connection with situations that might be better classed as abrasion. Solid particle erosion refers to a series of particles striking and rebounding from the surface, while abrasion results from the sliding of abrasive particles across a surface under the action of an externally applied force. The clearest distinction is that, in erosion, the force exerted by the particles on the material is due to their deceleration, while in abrasion it is externally applied and approximately constant. This serves as a good working definition of the difference between the two phenomena. A clear-cut distinction between erosion and abrasion is difficult in some cases, particularly for very dense particle distributions in liquid or gas media, in which a pack of particles can develop and slide across the surface, which would be classed as abrasion. 

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