Abstract
Ideal bone scaffolds for tissue engineering should be highly porous allowing cell attachment, spreading, and differentiation and presenting appropriate biomechanical properties. These antagonistic characteristics usually require extensive experimental work to achieve optimised balanced properties. This paper presents a simulation approach to determine the mechanical behaviour of bone scaffolds allowing the compressive modulus and the deformation mechanisms to be predicted. Polycaprolactone scaffolds with regular square pores and different porosities were considered. Scaffolds were also printed using an extrusion-based additive manufacturing and assessed under compressive loads. Similar designs were used for both simulation and fabrication steps. A good correlation between numerical and experimental results was obtained, highlighting the suitability of the simulation tool for the mechanical design of 3D-printed bone scaffolds.
Highlights
The scaffold-based approach is the most relevant bone tissue engineering strategy [1,2,3]
Ideal bone scaffolds should be biocompatible, bioactive, biodegradable, and porous to enable cell seeding and vascularization and should present appropriate mechanical properties [6,7,8,9]
A static structural analysis system and a linear elastic material property was considThe compressive modulus for each group of scaffolds was evaluated by measuring ered for the prediction of the elastic behaviour of the PCL scaffolds [16]
Summary
The scaffold-based approach is the most relevant bone tissue engineering strategy [1,2,3] In this approach, scaffolds are three-dimensional (3D) physical substrates designed to promote cell attachment, differentiation, and proliferation, promoting the formation of a new tissue [4,5]. To minimise the extensive experimental work required to design bone scaffolds, different computational tools have been proposed These tools are usually based on the use of analytical methods comprising empirical relationships between structural parameters and mechanical properties; CAD-based modelling methods, where the scaffold is designed using a repetition of 3D building blocks; CT-based methods using an image-based approach; and the homogenisation theory, which is a multilevel approach able to describe the scaffold at both the micro and macro levels [10]
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