Evaluation of Forces in Elevator Muscles of Mandible

The monograph deals with determining the muscular forces in the muscles taking part in mandible elevation, i.e. the masseter, the temporal muscle and the medial pterygoid muscle. The computations were performed for two different values of the bite force which can be generated by the muscles of mastication, i.e. respectively the maximum bite force which the muscular system of a healthy human can generate in laboratory conditions and the bite force needed to bite off a food morsel in physiological conditions. A spatial mandible model developed on the basis of a polyurethane model of the human mandible (Synbone) was used in the studies. Classical methods of analytical statics and numerical methods (FEM and the LMS DADS software for the dynamic analysis of multibody systems) were used to compute the muscular forces. Five basic load cases and thirty one detailed load cases were prepared for the maximum bite force problem. Because of the complexity of the mastication process only one load case (biting off food) was considered for the bite force in physiological conditions.