Numerical Simulation of Mandible Bone Remodeling under Tooth Loading: A Parametric Study

Bone adapts to the change of mechanical stimulus by bone remodeling activities. A number of numerical algorithms have been developed to model the adaptive bone remodeling under mechanical loads for orthopedic and dental applications. This paper examines the effects of several model parameters on the computed apparent bone density in mandible under normal chewing and biting forces. The density change rate was based on the strain energy density per unit mass. The algorithms used in this study containing an equilibrium zone (lazy zone) and saturated values of density change rate provides certain stability to result in convergence without discontinuous checkerboard patterns. The parametric study shows that when different boundary conditions were applied, the bone density distributions at convergence were very different, except in the vicinity of the applied loads. Compared with the effects of boundary conditions, the models are less sensitive to the choice of initial density values. Several models starting from different initial density values resulted in similar but not exactly the same bone density distribution at convergence. The results also show that higher reference value of mechanical stimulus resulted in lower average bone density at convergence. Moreover, the width of equilibrium zone did not substantially affect the average density at convergence. However, with increasing width, the areas with the highest and the lowest bone density areas were all reduced. The limitations of the models and challenges for future work were discussed for the better agreement between the computed results and the in vivo data.