Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / One of the most common concern among patients who need orthodontic treatment
is treatment duration. The ability to accelerate orthodontic tooth movements would
be bene cial to reduce the undesired side-effects of prolonged treatment. Methods
have been used in conjugate with common orthodontic appliances to shorten the
treatment. One of them is to use vibrational force (VF), which is non-invasive. The
VF stimulates bone modeling and remodeling, which is essential to tooth movement.
However, commercial devices used in the clinic failed to deliver consistent outcomes.
The effects of the VF highly depend on its intensity the tooth receives. There must be
a range of stimulation that optimizes the ffeects. The stimulation outside the range
either have no effects or creates damages, which adversely affects the orthodontic
treatment. Since these devices have generic mouthpiece and teeth are in di erent
heights, hence some teeth cannot get force stimulation and others may be overloaded.
The current designs also do not have ability to adjust the level of VF intensity that
individual tooth needs, as in some cases orthodontists are required to move a tooth
faster than others or even slower, which needs the device to be personalized. There-
fore, the primary cause of inconsistent clinical outcomes is the inadequate design of
the mouthpiece of the current device. The goal of this study is to design a better
vibratory device that not only guarantees VF delivery but also enables orthodontists
to control the level of VF on the individual tooth, which meets the patient's treat-
ment needs. This is a preliminary study to understand the effects of different design
parameters affecting the VF distribution on teeth. A nite element model, which
consists of human upper and lower jaws in their occlusal positions and a mouthpiece,
was created. The VF was from a vibratory source with a peak load of 0.3N and
speci ed frequencies (30 and 120 Hz). The element size was determined through a
convergence test and the model was validated experimentally. Results showed that the
VF distribution among the teeth relies on the material property of the mouthpiece.
The distribution is uneven, meaning some teeth bearing much more load than others.
This means, with the current device design, teeth would be a ected with di erent
level of force stimulation, which results in di erent clinical outcomes consequently.
Dynamic load (VF) changes the force distribution on the teeth comparing to the dis-
tribution from a static load. Frequency does not affect the peak load. Finally, the
study demonstrated that the level of VF stimulation can be adjusted by introducing
clearance or interference between the teeth and mouthpiece. It is feasible to control
the level of the VF intensity for individual tooth based on treatment requirement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/20086 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Akbari, Amin |
| Contributors | Chen, Jie, Wagner, Diane, Holguin, Nilsson |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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