Computational Tailoring of Orthopaedic Biomaterials: Design Principles and Aiding Tools

Abstract

Biomaterials are essential to medical device production, play a critical role in health care and affect the quality and longevity of human life. The ever-increasing demand for the use of medical devices and implants offering improved function and ease of life makes the development of new biomaterials a challenging task. The design and development of biomaterials are quite a complicated procedure, which involves the manipulation of composition and structure to combine multiple mechanical and biological properties, sometimes even conflicting, in the desired biomaterial, simultaneously. The use of computational techniques can help in the evaluation of designed materials without the need to make any physical object and spend too much money, and more importantly reduce the risks to the development efforts. This chapter overviews the design of orthopaedic biomaterials for total hip and knee replacements, and bone scaffolds. The computational methods involved in their design scenarios are presented, and some efficient tools are introduced to aid in the development of more reliable and optimal biomaterials.