Abstract
This study presents a comparison between the performances of two Finite Element (FE) solvers for the modeling of the poroelastic behavior of highly hydrated collagen hydrogels. Characterization of collagen hydrogels has been a widespread challenge since this is one of the most used natural biomaterials for Tissue Engineering (TE) applications. V-Biomech® is a free custom FE solver oriented to soft tissue modeling, while Abaqus® is a general-purpose commercial FE package which is widely used for biomechanics computational modeling. Poroelastic simulations with both solvers were compared to two experimental protocols performed by Busby et al. (2013) and Chandran and Barocas (2004), also using different implementations of the frequently used Neo-Hookean hyperelastic model. The average differences between solvers outputs were under 5% throughout the different tests and hydrogel properties. Thus, differences were small enough to be considered negligible and within the variability found experimentally from one sample to another. This work demonstrates that constitutive modeling of soft tissues, such as collagen hydrogels can be achieved with either V-Biomech or Abaqus standard options (without user-subroutine), which is important for the biomechanics and biomaterials research community. V-Biomech has shown its potential for the validation of biomechanical characterization of soft tissues, while Abaqus' versatility is useful for the modeling and analysis of TE applications where other complex phenomena may also need to be captured.
Highlights
Since collagen is a natural biomaterial, intrinsically biocompatible and biodegradable, collagen-based hydrogels are widely used in tissue engineering (TE)
The 2% average difference between the calculations with the three models is lower than the standard deviation of the experiments in Busby et al (2013) (±5% average across the three collagen hydrogels groups), which most likely means that such differences are not FIGURE 5 | 0.30% collagen hydrogel during 300 s stress relaxation test
V-Biomech presents the advantage of being a free tool (Castro et al, 2014), which can be modified through its source code if new challenges are presented
Summary
Since collagen is a natural biomaterial, intrinsically biocompatible and biodegradable, collagen-based hydrogels are widely used in tissue engineering (TE). These collagen hydrogels can be used as a scaffold as they present an advantageous host for cell migration, proliferation and differentiation (Cen et al, 2008; Sharabi et al, 2014). Poroelastic Modeling of Collagen Hydrogels characterization, which is still a challenge, due to its complexity and wide-range of applications (Roeder et al, 2002; Castro et al, 2016). Collagen modeling is challenging and has been discussed over the years, namely in what concerns to compressibility, fiber contribution and biphasic behavior, so this work intends to present different alternatives for the biomaterials research community
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