ISR research accomplishments
Mouth Motion Simulator
Research team
Guangming Zhang (ME/ISR)
Accomplishment
A biomedical device for dental research has been developed at the Institute for Systems Research with support from the National Institute of Health. The device is capable of simulating some basic patterns of the human mouth motion.
This project was initiated in 1997 under the request of the National Institute of Health to carry out the evaluation of advanced ceramic material for fabricating dental restorations. Through a three-year effort and with the collaboration with the Dental School at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and the University of Medicine and Dentistry at New Jersey, a prototype model has been designed and built.
The device consists of three parts, namely, the motion unit, the control unit and the computer unit. The device is capable of performing the contact between a dental crown and its opposite cusp under a variety of loading conditions.
The Mouth Motion Simulator has
a set of piozo-electrical sensors to perform in-process monitoring
of the contact between a dental crown and its opposite cusp.
It can simulate the short-term failure, such as clincal try-in
failure modes the long-term failure, such as wear and fatigue-related
failure modes, and bruxism.
A built-in sensing system is capable of automating the motion control. A software system manages the data collection and manipulation.
Impact
The device has been successfully used in simulating the clinical try-in failure motion in the short term and the wear and fatigue failure motion in the long term. The work on further improvement is going on with a focus on commercializing the product.
For more information
Visit Dr. Zhang's home page or the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Laboratory web site.
