A FEM-based study on the influence of skewness and kurtosis surface texture parameters in human dental occlusal contact

Tooth wear, which manifests with a great variety of degree or level, is one of the dental abnormalities commonly found in diverse populations. The computational modeling of occlusal contact problem can help comprehension of any interaction between teeth generating stress concentration. The approach used to simulate contact between rough surfaces, given the probability density functions, consists in discretizing them into several intervals, so that each one represents a main asperity. The deformations of the main asperities are analyzed and, using homogenization techniques, it is possible to establish the relationship among the responses occurred in micro-scale and the predicted responses in macro-scale. In this work we create parameterized scripts in Python language for the Abaqus CAE software in order to analyze the influence of the surface topography on contact of human dental occlusal surfaces. The texture parameters influence their tribological behavior. As the mean roughness or mean curvature increases, the nature of the contact changes from elastic to plastic and the friction coefficient increases and becomes saturated. For negative skewness, the higher the skewness, the lower the contact area. For positive skewness, the opposite is observed. The higher the kurtosis, greater the area, except for kurtosis less than 3. The surface hardness is not affected by any of the surface texture parameters tested. Further verification using experimental data can encourage dentists to become more familiar with computer simulation.