Journal of Dental Research, Vol 71, 458-465, Copyright © 1992 by International & American Associations for Dental Research Online Journals
A computer simulation of the influence of selection and breakage of food on the chewing efficiency of human mastication
A. Van der Bilt, H. W. Van der Glas and F. Bosman
Department of Oral Pathophysiology, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
The reduction of food particle sizes during mastication is considered to be
the composite result of a selection and breakage process. The chance of a
food particle being selected between the teeth was assumed to increase as a
power function of the particle's size, whereas the breakage of food
particles was described by a cumulative distribution function. The
selection and breakage functions were combined with matrix algebra,
resulting in a matrix model. By use of this model, particle-size
distributions could be calculated after various numbers of chewing cycles.
From these distributions, the decrease of the median particle size was
determined as a function of the number of chewing cycles. The calculations
were performed for various sets of physiologically relevant selection and
breakage variables. The number of chewing cycles, N1/2, needed for the
initial particle size to be halved was taken as an indication of chewing
efficiency. This number varied approximately inversely with both the
selection coefficient and the breakage variable. The initial particle size
appeared to have the largest influence on N1/2. The theoretical results
from the simulation study were also compared with data obtained from
experiments on human chewing efficiency.
