Determination of oral mucosal Poisson’s ratio and coefficient of friction from in-vivo contact pressure measurements.

Despite their considerable importance to biomechanics, there are no existing methods available to directly measure apparent Poisson’s ratio and friction coefficient of oral mucosa. This study aimed to develop an inverse procedure to determine these two biomechanical parameters by utilizingin vivoexperiment of contact pressure between partial denture and beneath mucosa through nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis and surrogate response surface (RS) modelling technique. First, thein vivodenture–mucosa contact pressure was measured by a tactile electronic sensing sheet. Second, a 3D FE model was constructed based on the patient CT images. Third, a range of apparent Poisson’s ratios and the coefficients of friction from literature was considered as the design variables in a series of FE runs for constructing a RS surrogate model. Finally, the discrepancy between computedin silicoand measuredin vivoresults was minimized to identify the best matching Poisson’s ratio and coefficient of friction. The established non-invasive methodology was demonstrated effective to identify such biomechanical parameters of oral mucosa and can be potentially used for determining the biomaterial properties of other soft biological tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]