%0 Journal Article
%T Material Properties of the Mandibular Trabecular Bone
%A ¨¦va Lakatos
%A L¨®r¨¢nt Magyar
%A Imre Bojt¨¢r
%J Journal of Medical Engineering
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/470539
%X The present paper introduces a numerical simulation aided, experimental method for the measurement of Young¡¯s modulus of the trabecular substance in the human mandible. Compression tests were performed on fresh cadaveric samples containing trabecular bone covered with cortical layer, thus avoiding the destruction caused by the sterilization, preservation, and storage and the underestimation of the stiffness resulting from the individual failure of the trabeculae cut on the surfaces. The elastic modulus of the spongiosa was determined by the numerical simulation of each compression test using a specimen specific finite element model of each sample. The received mandibular trabecular bone Young¡¯s modulus values ranged from 6.9 to 199.5£¿MPa. 1. Introduction The biomechanical behaviour of a dental implant plays an important role in its functional longevity inside the bone. Implants can have either advantageous or destructive effect on the surrounding bone, depending on several physiological, material, and mechanical factors. The mandible¡ªlower jaw bone¡ªlike most human bones is divided into an external cortical and an internal trabecular substance (or spongiosa). The aim of the following experiments was to determine the mechanical properties of the human mandibular trabecular bone, to be used in further finite element models. Application of finite element analysis has become an indispensable method for estimating mechanical behaviour, stress and strain distributions under a certain load, of the cortical and cancellous bone surrounding dental implants, since it is nondestructive. These numerical experiments have their importance in making the implantation the most possibly secure, reliable, and efficient and the lifetime of the implant the longest conceivable, by finding the most favourable thread formation, surface, material, and so forth. The measurement of the trabecular bone material properties by means of conventional mechanical tests involves several difficulties [1, 2]. Because of the scale of the human bones, the primary difficulty is to obtain cubic shaped specimens from purely trabecular regions larger than 5£¿mm, which is taken for the lower limit to be examined in compression tests [2, 3]. This can cause serious problems in the examination of the small bones like mandible. In contradiction to the measurements of artificial materials, further difficulties arise in case of biological materials¡ªespecially human tissues. Since the poor availability of specimens, the researchers are often under the necessity of drawing conclusions from small number of
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jme/2014/470539/