BIOMEDICAL
Brief of scope and analysis
Brief
A mini-plate for the osteosynthesis of mandibular angle fractures was designed to improve the formation of new bone by reducing—through shape and configuration of holes—the maximum strains that occur in the cortical bone near the first attachment screw, propagating towards the edges of the fracture, through the well-known edge distance effect.
The mini-plate was developed as part of a doctorate program at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania—with the analyses and FEA simulations preliminary to the development of the new design being done predominantly in Australia. The physical prototypes were CNC machined, tested and inspected afterwards for major mechanical deterioration, or any indications of metal fatigue damage. The new mini-plate has a patent.
For more information on this project, visit ScienceDirect and ResearchGate.
*A. Mandible, mini-plate and screws in finite element discretization
*B. Physical prototype during testing
(wireframe edges removed for clarity)
*A. Entire mandible with mini-plate and screws
*A. The posterior fragment
B.
Loads and Boundary Conditions
A biting force of 200N was applied at the area of the lower incisive teeth and the mandible fragments were supported by fixing all translations at the nodes on the outer surfaces of the condyles.
