Mechanical behaviour of 3D printed vs thermoformed clear dental aligner materials under non-linear compressive loading using FEM

Clear dental aligners are commonly manufactured using thermoplastic materials such as Duran and Durasoft. Using conventional thermoforming methods there are inherent disadvantages including time consumption and poor geometrical accuracies that often occur. The use of digital technologies and 3D printing techniques for producing dental aligners is often preferred where possible. Innovation in 3D printing has resulted in biocompatible materials becoming more readily available, including Formlabs Dental LT Clear resin, which is a 3D printable and Class IIa bio-compatible material. In this paper, we investigate the difference between thermoplastic materials such as Scheu-Dental Duran and Durasoft and 3D printed Dental LT using Finite Element Analysis (FEA)/Finite Element Modelling (FEM) in a dental aligner case based on an analysis of von Mises stress distribution at molars, incisors and canines for a total of 33161 nodes using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Maximum von Mises stress distribution at all of the sections under the action of non-linear compressive forces equivalent to human biting force (up to 600 N) were discovered to vary within a range of 0.2-7.7% for Dental LT resin. The Duran and Durasoft cases were comparable, thereby widening the scope for the use of Dental LT in various dentistry applications, including clear aligners.