Modeling of Multifunctional Porous Tissue Scaffolds With Continuous Deposition Path Plan

Abstract

A novel modeling technique for porous tissue scaffolds with targeting the functionally gradient variational porosity with continuous material deposition planning has been proposed. To vary the porosity of the designed scaffold functionally, medial axis transformation is used. The medial axis of each layers of the scaffold is calculated and used as an internal feature. The medial axis is then used connected to the outer contour using an optimum matching. The desired pore size and hence the porosity have been achieved by discretizing the sub-regions along its peripheral direction based on the pore size while meeting the tissue scaffold design constraints. This would ensure the truly porous nature of the structure in every direction as well as controllable porosity with interconnected pores. Thus the desired controlled variational porosity along the scaffold architecture has been achieved with the combination of two geometrically oriented consecutive layers. A continuous, interconnected and optimized tool-path has been generated for successive layers for additive-manufacturing or solid free form fabrication process. The proposed methodology has been computationally implemented with illustrative examples. Furthermore, the designed example scaffolds with the desired pore size and porosity has been fabricated with an extrusion based bio-fabrication process.