Fatigue Life and Reliability Evaluation for Dental Implants Based on Computer Simulation and Limited Test Data

Dental implants have been extensively utilized on edentulous patients for many years. The fatigue life of dental implants is critical for them being approved to use in human body because they are within the area of biomedicine. To perform a preliminary investigation of fatigue life of dental implants, this article reports a method of fatigue life estimation based on the combination of computer simulation and limited test data. The method is developed based on a probabilistic form of fatigue life given according to the properties of material fatigue strength. The procedure is carried out by shifting of the regression line (representing the fatigue-life curve) to the desired value of the probability of occurrence. Computer simulation includes both stress analysis and life estimation which are done using the ANSYS software. This estimation model offers a method for fatigue life evaluation and yields the life distribution in respect to the scatter of the cyclic properties of dental implants. Furthermore, the reliability of lifetime is calculated based on the probabilistic form. The purposes of this study are to predict fatigue life using a small amount of testing data and to provide a risk assessment for dental implants in use.