REVIEW ARTICLE
Fem Sensitivity Analyses on the Stress Levels in a Human Mandible with a Varying ATM Modelling Complexity
E. Armentani1, F. Caputo2, R. Citarella*, 3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 8
Last Page: 15
Publisher Id: TOMEJ-4-8
DOI: 10.2174/1874155X010040100008
Article History:
Received Date: 9/2/2009Revision Received Date: 28/12/2009
Acceptance Date: 15/1/2010
Electronic publication date: 1/4/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In this work the structural behaviour of a mandible considering a unilateral occlusion is numerically analysed by means of the Finite Element Method (FEM). The mandible, considered as completely edentolous, is modelled together with its articular disks, whose material behaviour is assumed as elastic or hyper-elastic. The mandible model is obtained by computer tomography scans. The anisotropic and non homogeneous bone material behaviour is considered and the loads applied to the mandible are those related to the active muscle groups during unilateral occlusion. The results of FEM analysis are presented mainly in terms of stress distribution on the mandible. Because of uncertainty on the determination of the adopted parameters, a sensitivity analysis is provided, showing the way in which the variation of articular disc stiffness and temporomandibular joint friction coefficient has an impact on the mandible stress peak and occlusal force.