Experimental analysis of the temperature rise during the simulation of an implant drilling process using experimental designs

The temperature rise during dental implant site preparation performed with drilling can cause the death of bone cells in the bone tissue surrounding the drilling location and, as a consequence, the implant failure. Since the temperature rise during the bone drilling is a result of complex processes influenced by many parameters, in this paper we present the use of an experimental design method to determine the effects of the drilling parameters on the temperature rise. For this purpose we developed a measurement system that allows drilling with different drill bits, settings and measurements of the drilling force and drilling speed, settings of the final drilling depth, measurements of the position of the drill bit and measurements of the temperature in the test specimen. The measurements were performed on PMMA test specimens in order to provide good repeatability of the measurements. To determine the main effects of the drilling parameters and their interactions, the measurement results were analyzed using 3(3) full factorial design. In order to mathematically describe the drilling process and to determine the optimum values of the influential parameters that cause the minimum temperature rise in the range of parameters values used in implant dentistry, response surface methodology was used. The mathematically determined optimum values for the parameters were also experimentally confirmed. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.