Simulation of mandibular plate in Abaqus

Description

What is Abaqus?

Abaqus is an FEA software for multiple engineering purposes. It has been widely used by many researchers, companies, and students to simulate simple and complex models. Compared to other software, Abaqus is a flexible tool for analyzing the process. Even though it has a user-friendly environment, it is not easy to learn as the license is extremely expensive. Therefore, tutorial videos are not easy to find or too expensive. Before explaining the Abaqus tutorial details, we should first learn what Abaqus covers and what exactly it is. The following explanation was extracted from Abaqus 6.14 documentation.

Abaqus/CAE  is a Complete Abaqus Environment that provides a simple, consistent interface for creating, submitting, monitoring, and evaluating results from Abaqus simulations. Abaqus/CAE is divided into modules, where each module defines a logical aspect of the modelling process; for example, defining the geometry, defining material properties, generating a mesh, submitting analysis jobs, and interpreting results.

Mandibular plate

The use of a customized reconstruction plate is an effective method for the reconstruction of mandibular continuity defects. This project aimed to investigate the biomechanical behaviour of the customized reconstruction plate by finite element method. In designing customized plates, it is important to assess potential biomechanical responses. This depends greatly on the size and geometry of the defect. This project Check out to do Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on the conventional type mandibular plate and screws which are fixed to join fracture occurring at the symphysis area of the mandibular bone subjected to uniform loading.

The tutorial video

The Computer Tomography (CT) scanned images of a patient are collected in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format. These images are then imported into image processing software MIMICS to develop the 3D surface model of the mandible. Next, we import it into the 3-Matic software for modifying the surface model and then finally save it as “.STL” file format. The saved “.STL” file format is imported into Solidworks software to develop a 3D CAD model consisting of an assembly of the mandible, conventional type of miniplate, and screws. Next, we import the 3D CAD model of the assembled file into Abaqus and analyze it by applying uniformly distributed load on the molar teeth area of the mandible. The whole process is simplified by using the STL files in Abaqus.

The input given for Finite Element Analysis was the material properties of the cortical and cancellous bone of the mandible and for implant and screws the material properties of titanium alloy. In the contact module, suitable contact conditions with a coefficient of friction of 0.3 were defined for the model. For the mesh, hexahedral and triangular elements were assigned to the components depending on the geometry of the part.

Here, one case was considered and analyzed under structural loading conditions by applying force on a molar tooth. In this simulation, an explicit step is used. At the end of this video, you can see the exact location of von Mises stress in the mandibular plate.

The recorded video is about 5 minutes and helps you learn how to use Abaqus for this purpose.

You can download the Abaqus CAE file which includes the parts and the assembly. 

This video is made by Saman Hoseini. For more information, please send him an Email:

samanhoseini@hyperlyceum.com