3D elastic dental analysis by a local RBF collocation method

Abstract In this paper, the local radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM) is presented to analyze 3D elastic problems of complex geometries. In particular, a real tooth domain built by cone beam computer tomography (CBCT) data is considered. The reconstruction process of a tooth shape, the choice of the local influence domain in the LRBFCM, as well as the treatments of the boundary conditions are detailed described in this paper. Linear elastic analyses of five different examples are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The stress difference between a tooth with the dental caries and a healthy tooth is investigated and discussed by the 3D elastic deformation and stress analysis.