Heating Effects of Dental Drilling

Abstract

Drilling causes pain in the tooth for various reasons. This paper addresses the heating of the pulpal region due to friction from drilling. The heating may depend on such parameters as the speed of the drill, water supply, and the rate of drilling. By coupling the semi-infinite geometry of a tooth with complex mechanisms of drilling, it may be possible to optimize the conditions of drilling such that the patient feels minimal pain. Modeling the above process on the computational software called FIDAP, we concluded that higher drill speeds correlate to the reduction of perceived temperature, and thus, pain level.