Force systems from an ideal arch

Charles J. Burstone, D.D.S., MS.,* and

Herbert A. Koenig, M.S.M.E., Ph.D.**
Farmington, Conx

The force systems delivered from commonly used orthodontic appli-

ances are relatively unknown. It is little wonder that unpredictable and many
times undesirable tooth movement is produced during treatment. In the more
sophisticated orthodontic appliances, the force system is produced totally or in
part by placing a wire with a given configuration into a series of attachments
(brackets, tubes, etc.) on the teeth. In an attempt to determine the force system,
orthodontists in the past have used force gauges to measure the amount of force
required to seat an arch wire in a bracket. IJnfortunately, this bit of information
is inadequate to describe the force system completely in most clinical applications,
since the situation is statically indeterminate; in other words, there are too many
unknowns to calculate the forces from an appliance using the laws of statics.
Clinically, such measurements represent little more than pseudoscience, since
they incompletely describe the physical realities and, hence, will not predict the
biologic response and the nature of the tooth movement to be expected.
The purpose of this article is threefold: (1) to describe the force system
which is produced when a straight wire is placed in a nonaligned bracket
produced by a malocclusion ; (2) to develop the terminology and the approach
to solve and describe force systems from all appliances; and (3) to offer a
scientific basis for developing the orthodontic appliances of the future. To reach
these objectives, the simplest clinical situation will be considered-the placing of
a straight wire in two attachments on two teeth.

Two-tooth segments

When an arch wire is placed in the mouth a complicated set of forces is

produced at each tooth. Reduction of this complex system into less complicated
basic units would offer a simpler approach to understanding and solving many
of the clinical problems that exist. The smallest basic unit that one could study
is the two-tooth segment of an arch, An example of a two-tooth segment could
*Head, Department of Orthodontics, School of Dental Medicine, University of
Connecticut.
**Associate Professor, Department of Orthodontics, School of Dental Medicine,
University of Connecticut.

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