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By computed tomography data (CT), the individual geometry of the mandible is quite well reproduced, also the separation between cortical and trabecular bone. Using anatomical knowledge about the architecture and the functional potential of the masticatory muscles, realistic situations were approximated. The solution of the underlying partial differential equations describing linear elastic material behaviour is provided by an adaptive finite element method. Estimations of the discretization error, local grid refinement, and multilevel techniques guarantee the reliability and efficiency of the method.
Structural mechanics simulation of bony organs is of general medical and biomechanical interest, because of the interdependence of the inner architecture of bone and its functional loading already stated by Wolff in 1892. This work is part of a detailed research project concerning the human mandible. By adaptive finite element techniques, stress/strain profiles occurring in the bony structure under biting were simulated. Estimates of the discretization errors, local grid refinement, and multilevel techniques guarantee the reliability and efficiency of the method. In general, our simulation requires a representation of the organ's geometry, an appropriate material description, and the load case due to teeth, muscle, or joint forces. In this paper, we want to focus on the influence of the masticatory system. Our goal is to capture the physiological situation as far as possible. By means of visualization techniques developed by the group, we are able to extract individual muscle fibres from computed tomography data. By a special algorithm, the fibres are expanded to fanlike (esp. for the musc. temporalis) coherent vector fields similar to the anatomical reality. The activity of the fibres can be adapted according to compartmentalisation of the muscles as measured by electromyological experiments. A refined sensitivity analysis proved remarkable impact of the presented approach on the simulation results.
We focus on the role of anisotropic elasticity in the simulation of the load distribution in a human mandible due to a lateral bite on the leftmost premolar. Based on experimental evidence, we adopt ``local''" orthotropy of the elastic properties of the bone tissue. Since the trajectories of anisotropic elasticity are not accessible from Computer Tomographic (CT) data, they will be reconstructed from (i) the organ's geometry and (ii) from coherent structures which can be recognized from the spatial distribution of the CT values. A sensitivity analysis comprising various 3D FE simulations reveals the relevance of elastic anisotropy for the load carrying behavior of a human mandible: Comparison of the load distributions in isotropic and anisotropic simulations indicates that anisotropy seems to ``spare''" the mandible from loading. Moreover, a maximum degree of anisotropy leads to kind of an load minimization of the mandible, expressed by a minimum of different norms of local strain, evaluated throughout the organ. Thus, we may suggest that anisotropy is not only relevant, but also in some sense ``optimal''.
The paper extends affine conjugate Newton methods from convex to nonconvex minimization, with particular emphasis on PDE problems originating from compressible hyperelasticity. Based on well-known schemes from finite dimensional nonlinear optimization, three different algorithmic variants are worked out in a function space setting, which permits an adaptive multilevel finite element implementation. These algorithms are tested on two well-known 3D test problems and a real-life example from surgical operation planning.
Reasons for the failure of adaptive methods to deliver improved efficiency when integrating monodomain models for myocardiac excitation are discussed. Two closely related techniques for reducing the computational complexity of linearly implicit integrators, deliberate sparsing and splitting, are investigated with respect to their impact on computing time and accuracy.
Pulse thermography of concrete structures is used in civil engineering for detecting voids, honeycombing and delamination. The physical situation is readily modeled by Fourier's law. Despite the simplicity of the PDE structure, quantitatively realistic numerical 3D simulation faces two major obstacles. First, the short heating pulse induces a thin boundary layer at the heated surface which encapsulates all information and therefore has to be resolved faithfully. Even with adaptive mesh refinement techniques, obtaining useful accuracies requires an unsatisfactorily fine discretization. Second, bulk material parameters and boundary conditions are barely known exactly. We address both issues by a semi-analytic reformulation of the heat transport problem and by parameter identification. Numerical results are compared with measurements of test specimens.
Adaptive Solutions of Nonlinear Parabolic Equations with Application to Hyperthermia Treatments
(1997)
We present a self-adaptive finite element method to solve nonlinear evolution problems in 3D. An implicit time integrator of Rosenbrock type is coupled with a multilevel approach in space. The proposed method is applied to hyperthermia treatments to demonstrate its potential for the solving of complicated problems.