Material parameters of the reindeer antler for use in dental implant biomechanics.

The survival of dental implants, in particular immediately loaded implants, critically depends on the biomechanical properties of the bone bed surrounding them. In experimental animal investigations of immediately loaded implants the initial stability, implant design as well as stress and strain distributions in the surrounding bone have been extensively studied. It was the aim of this study to investigate the biomechanical properties of the reindeer antler used as a bony tissue surrounding dental implants, in particular the Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, and further numerical parameters such as mesh density, friction models and the corresponding frictional coefficients and relative velocities for establishing a novel animal model that can be used in the numerical analyses of experimentally investigated antler specimens. The sensitivity of the investigated parameters was analysed based on the close correlation of numerical and experimental results. No obvious influence of the frictional coefficient and/or relative velocity was observed on the implant displacement using a finite element model. Moreover, nearly identical numerical and experimental results were observed for two kinds of implants concerning implant deflection in the x-axis and implant rotation around the y-axis.