Numerical verification of two-component dental implant in the context of fatigue life for various load cases.

PURPOSE Dental implant designing is a complex process which considers many limitations both biological and mechanical in nature. In earlier studies, a complete procedure for improvement of two-component dental implant was proposed. However, the optimization tasks carried out required assumption on representative load case, which raised doubts on optimality for the other load cases. This paper deals with verification of the optimal design in context of fatigue life and its main goal is to answer the question if the assumed load scenario (solely horizontal occlusal load) leads to the design which is also "safe" for oblique occlussal loads regardless the angle from an implant axis. METHODS The verification is carried out with series of finite element analyses for wide spectrum of physiologically justified loads. The design of experiment methodology with full factorial technique is utilized. All computations are done in Abaqus suite. RESULTS The maximal Mises stress and normalized effective stress amplitude for various load cases are discussed and compared with the assumed "safe" limit (equivalent of fatigue life for 5e6 cycles). CONCLUSIONS The obtained results proof that coronial-appical load component should be taken into consideration in the two component dental implant when fatigue life is optimized. However, its influence in the analyzed case is small and does not change the fact that the fatigue life improvement is observed for all components within whole range of analyzed loads.