Publication

Abstract : Use of dental implants in case of missing natural dentition is now common in clinical dentistry. The tilted implant configurations, which are inevitable in many clinical situations, are prone to higher stresses. The orientation of implants has a great influence on its structural integrity as high stresses around the implants adversely affect the osseointegration process and eventually fail due to the bone resorption. Hence, complete understanding of such complex systems demand better understanding of the bio-mechanics involved. Photoelasticity, a whole-field optical technique, is the right choice for analysing such implant configurations. Recent advancements in digital photoelasticity make it possible to evaluate isochromatics as well as isoclinic parameters over the entire model domain with considerable accuracy. However, these techniques have not been exploited in the field of implant dentistry and photoelasticity has been mostly used as a visualisation tool. This paper explores the use of modern photoelastic techniques for analysing the stress distribution due to an implant with an inclination of 15°. Further, this work also studies the high stress zones in the coronal region of this angled implant. The isochromatic data is post processed using least squares method for determining the contact parameters such as effective contact length and frictional coefficient.