ABSTRACT
Tendon traumas or diseases are prevalent and debilitating lesions that affect the quality of life among populations worldwide. As a novel solution, tendon tissue engineering aims to address these lesions by integrating engineered, living substitutes with their native counterparts in vivo, thereby restoring the defective functions in situ. For such a purpose, competent scaffolding materials are essential. To date, three major categories of scaffolding materials have been employed: polyesters, polysaccharides, and collagen derivatives. Furthermore, with these materials as a base, a variety of specialized methodologies have been developed or adopted to enhance neo-tendogenesis. These strategies include cellular hybridization, interfacing improvement, and physical stimulation.
Subject(s)
Guided Tissue Regeneration/trends , Regeneration , Tendons/physiology , Tissue Engineering/trends , Tissue Scaffolds/trends , Animals , Biocompatible Materials/metabolism , Biocompatible Materials/therapeutic use , Coculture Techniques/trends , Collagen/metabolism , Collagen/therapeutic use , Contact Inhibition , Humans , Materials Testing , Physical Stimulation , Polyesters/metabolism , Polyesters/therapeutic use , Polysaccharides/metabolism , Polysaccharides/therapeutic use , Tendon Injuries/therapy , Tendons/pathology , Tensile StrengthABSTRACT
Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is an extrusion based Rapid prototyping (RP) technique which can be used to fabricate tissue engineering scaffolds. The present work focuses on the study of the melt flow behaviour (MFB) of Poly-epsilon-caprolactone (PCL) as a representative biomaterial, on the FDM. The MFB significantly affects the quality of the scaffold which depends not only on the pressure gradient, its velocity, and the temperature gradients but also physical properties like the melt temperature and rheology. The MFB is studied using two methods: mathematical modelling and finite element analysis (FEA) using Ansys(R). The MFB is studied using accurate channel geometry by varying filament velocity at the entry and by varying nozzle diameters and angles at the exit. The comparative results of both mathematical modelling and FEA suggest that the pressure drop and the velocities of the melt flow depend on the flow channel parameters. One inference of particular interest is the temperature gradient of the PCL melt, which shows that it liquefies within 35% of the channel length. These results are invaluable to better understand the MFB of biomaterials that affects the quality of the scaffold built via FDM and can also be used to predict the MFB of other biomaterials.