Foreword to the special issue on “Theoretical, experimental, and computational aspects of growth and remodeling”

Abstract

This Special Issue of Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology (BMMB) documents novel mathematical and computational models and experimental approaches summoned to resolve questions on growth and remodeling. Motivated by the increasing need to better identify the intricate interactions between mechanical and biological processes within tissues, this Special Issue is timely and a step toward improving our knowledge of howbiologicalmaterials perform their complex functions. This Special Issue contains a collection of eight original papers concerned with experimental approaches, theoretical analyses, numerical models, and combinations thereof. Six papers are directly related to growth, remodeling, and injury; they provide sample perspectives on different mechanobiological aspects of biological tissues. One common aim of several of these studies is the achievement of a deeper understanding of the underlying functionality to reliably quantify and predict matrix deposition during the adaptation of native or engineered tissues or the stress, deformation, and failure mechanisms under different loading conditions that may influence such deposition. The present studies focus on soft biological tissues such as the artery (Alford et al. 2007), cartilage (Davol et al. 2007, Asanbaeva et al. 2007), heart valve (Engelmayr and Sacks 2007), and skeletal muscle (Ceelen et al. 2007) and hard biological tissues such as bone (Liu and Niebur 2007). In addition, a novel computer-controlled biaxial test system with intravital light microscopic imaging (Humphrey et al. 2007) and a kinematics framework to achieve determinability for hyperelastic materials (Criscione