Analytical Study to Investigate Structural Behaviors of Skull During Mastication According to Occlusal Relationships

Abstract

This study proposes an effective modeling method to simulate masticatory action. Based on computed tomography (CT) images, finite element (FE) models of human skull with two different occlusal relationships, such as class I and end-on class II are constructed. After applied loading and boundary conditions for masticatory simulation, FE analyses are performed considering linear material properties and geometrical effect. As a result, the relationships between the mandibular movement and occlusal force of both two models show similar tendency in range of human occlusal force. However, stress distributions are different due to changes of occlusal surface. In addition, an experiment is conducted using replica skull model for the validation. The experimental results show a good agreement with the analytical results.