ABSTRACT
Soft tissues are significantly time dependent and viscoelastic, which can be modeled by the Prony series. In this chapter, a tooth finite element model was developed to explore the creep of the periodontal ligament (PDL), in which the PDL was defined by the three-parameter Prony series. The creep simulation includes two loading steps: loading and no loading. The simulation outputs the displacement time history of one node of the PDL, which matches the reference well. The simulation results indicate that after the loading is removed, the tooth recovers gradually because of the viscoelasticity of the PDL. If the PDL is characterized as linearly elastic, the tooth will recover instantly.
