Fatigue behaviour of dental implant using finite element method

Abstract

An attempt has been made in this study by employing the Deshpande and Fleck constitutive model, which is available in the ABAQUS software as the crushable foam material model, to reflect the stress-strain behavior of dental implants made of titanium foam (Ti-foam) under fatigue loading. For comparison purposes, solid Ti has also been considered in the study. Before proceeding to the study of fatigue loading effect on the implant, the modelling approach has been tested with the results of a compression test available in the open literature. Equivalent plastic strain, effective stress, and hydrostatic stress qualities have been generated for various porosity levels. Fatigue loadings corresponding to all three directions namely, lingual, axial, and mesio-distal directions have been applied on the implant for 50 load cycles in order to observe the fatigue loading effect on the implant. It has been observed from the simulation results that under identical conditions, stress generated in the Ti-foam material is less and Ti-foam can also transfer more loads to the surrounding bones as compared to the correspondings of solid Ti material. Therefore, Ti-foam based implant can solve the stress shielding effect and hence Ti-foam is a suitable alternative of the solid Ti for fabricating dental implants. © 2021