Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
A useful method for predicting the type of tooth movement that will occur with the
tooth movement. It has already been mentioned that the moment of a force with
respect to the centre of resistance depends upon the perpendicular distance of its
line of action to the centre of resistance, and therefore otherwise identical forces
placed at different positions on the tooth have different effects on tooth movement. In
order to determine how a tooth will move, it is useful to evaluate the force system at
the bracket to determine the equivalent force system at the centre of resistance 13.
3. The sum of moments acting around any point must also equal zero.
1
STATIC EQUILIBRIUM IN ORTHODONTICS
The laws of equilibrium require not only that for every force there is an equal and
opposite reactive force, but also that the sum of the moments around any arbitrary
point is equal to zero. In other words, the moments, as well as the forces, generated
Placing bends in a wire at strategic locations between two or more brackets is one
way of using these laws to move teeth in a predictable fashion. This is often done
during the finishing stages of treatment. The other method is to offset the brackets in
relation to each other to create the same forces and moments. This is what happens
during the initial stages of treatment when teeth are not aligned and a straight wire is
put in the brackets to align them. Bends placed on a wire between two attachments
create two kinds of force systems depending on how the wire is engaged in the
brackets.
Force systems can be defined as statically determinate, meaning that the moments
indeterminate systems are too complex for precisely calculating all forces and
moments involved in the equilibrium. Typically, only the direction of net moments and
2
STATIC EQUILIBRIUM IN ORTHODONTICS
For all practical purposes, determinate systems in orthodontics are those in which a
couple is created at one end of an attachment, with only a force (no couple) at the
other (i.e., a one-couple system). This means that a wire that will serve as a spring
can be inserted into a tube or bracket at one end but must be tied so that there is
only one point of contact on the other inserted into a tube or bracket at one end but
must be tied so that there is only one point of contact on the other. When the wire is
tied into a bracket on both ends, a statically indeterminate two-couple system has
been created15.
Biologically Statically
3
STATIC EQUILIBRIUM IN ORTHODONTICS