title: Improving mechanical properties of maxillary complete dentures through a bioinspired engineering design.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study investigated how ribbed design features, including palatal rugae, may be used to significantly improve the structural performance of a maxillary denture under load.
  
  
  METHODS
  A computer-aided design model of a generic maxillary denture, incorporating various rib features, was created and imported into a finite element analysis program. The denture and ribbed features were assigned the material properties of standard denture acrylic resin, and load was applied in two different ways: the first simulating a three-point flexural bend of the posterior section and the second simulating loading of the entire palatal region. To investigate the combined use of ribbing and reinforcement, the same simulations were repeated with the ribbed features having a Young modulus two orders of magnitude greater than denture acrylic resin. For a prescribed load, total displacements of tracking nodes were compared to those of a control denture (without ribbing) to assess relative denture rigidity.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When subjected to flexural loading, an increase in rib depth was seen to result in a reduction of both the transverse displacement of the last molar and vertical displacement at the centerline. However, ribbed features assigned the material properties of denture acrylic resin require a depth that may impose on speech and bolus propulsion before significant improvements are observed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of ribbed features, when made from a significantly stiffer material (eg, fiber-reinforced polymer) and designed to mimic palatal rugae, offer an acceptable method of providing significant improvements in rigidity to a maxillary denture under flexural load.
authors.affiliation: Department of aerospace Engineering, Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. J.White@bristol.ac.uk
authors.forename: James A P
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: White
authors.forename: Ian P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: Bond
authors.forename: Daryll C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Jagger
mesh_terms: D000180:Acrylic Resins; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D003799:Dental Stress Analysis / Q000379:methods; D003779:Denture Design; D003827:Denture, Complete, Upper; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D021362:Palate, Hard / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D018583:Pliability; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D000180:Acrylic Resins