Abstract
3D scaffolds for tissue engineering typically need to adopt a dynamic culture to foster cell distribution and survival throughout the scaffold. It is, therefore, crucial to know fluids' behavior inside the scaffold architecture, especially for complex porous ones. Here we report a comparison between simulated and measured permeability of a porous 3D scaffold, focusing on different modeling parameters. The scaffold features were extracted by microcomputed tomography (µCT) and representative volume elements were used for the computational fluid-dynamic analyses. The objective was to investigate the sensitivity of the model to the degree of detail of the µCT image and the elements of the mesh. These findings highlight the pros and cons of the modeling strategy adopted and the importance of such parameters in analyzing fluid behavior in 3D scaffolds.
Highlights
The design of three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds is crucial for an effective tissue engineering of musculoskeletal tissues
Scaffold permeability is directly linked to the scaffold architecture, which can strongly influence cell behavior: it is known that pore size and scaffold porosity can affect cell viability and proliferation in vitro [8], or resident cell colonization and migration in vivo [9]
computational fluid-dynamic (CFD) analyses of 3D scaffolds are often prohibitive from the computational cost viewpoint, when μCT-derived architectures must be managed, especially due to the scaffold's complex geometry
Summary
The design of three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds is crucial for an effective tissue engineering of musculoskeletal tissues. The internal architecture of these materials (mainly their porosity, pore size, and pore interconnectivity), influences the mechanical and mass transport properties of porous 3D scaffolds [1, 2]. These features, together with the pore distribution and orientation, determine if the scaffold permits a flow throughout the pores. Meshing, computation, and post-processing times must be taken into account in the case of highly non-homogeneous scaffolds [19, 20] To overcome these issues, computational analyses are sometimes focused on one or more representative volume elements (RVE) [19, 21]: this strategy allows for shorter simulation times, but it could affect the final result when the pre-processing procedures are not accurately investigated. The aim of this work is to investigate the RVE-CAD degree of the finish, the spatial position and size of the meshing elements, and to evaluate the effect of these features on the predicted permeability with respect to the measured one
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