Biomechanical comparison of pure Ti with Zr -2.5%Nb dental implant after implantation by finite element analysis

Improving dental implantation conditions in order to reduce the failure is always desirable for researchers. The aim of this research is a comparison between two different materials of dental implants from the viewpoint of biomechanical effect after placement and loading in the mandible.
A 3D model of mandible was designed in the MIMICS 10.01 software. Then by using the obtained model, the end part of the mandible was designed in CATIA V5 software and a drilling operation was performed on cortical bone of the mandible by finite element analysis simulation method in DEFORM-3D V6.1 software. Thereafter, the 3D model of created hole was extract from the drilled site and an ITI dental implant model designed in the CATIA V5 software, was placed in the hole. The space remained between the implant and cavity was considered as newly-formed cortical bone in drilled site after 6 weeks of dental implant placement and the mechanical properties of newly-formed bone were entered to DEFORM-3D V6.1 software. Then a load was applied on the top surface of two dental implant models with the materials titanium and zirconium-2.5% niobium.
The emerged volume changes in newly formed cortical bone around Ti and Zr-2.5 Nb dental implants were measured 0.238 and 0.242 percent, respectively. Furthermore, micro motion of Ti and Zr-2.5 Nb dental implants were measured 0.00514 and 0.00538 mm, respectively.
The results of this study showed that Ti dental implant creates better conditions than Zr-2.5 Nb dental implant in the mandible.