Characterization of biocompatible scaffolds manufactured by fused filament fabrication of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate).

We characterize poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) (PHBH) scaffolds for tissue repair and regeneration, manufactured by three-dimensional fused filament fabrication (FFF). PHBH belongs to the class of polyhydroxyalkanoates with interesting biodegradable and biocompatible capabilities, especially attractive for tissue engineering. Equally, FFF stands as a promising manufacturing technology for the production of custom-designed scaffolds. We address thermal, rheological and cytotoxicity properties of PHBH, placing special emphasis on the mechanical response of the printed material in a wide deformation range. Indeed, effective mechanical properties are assessed in both the linear and nonlinear regime. To warrant uniqueness of the material parameters, these are measured directly through digital image correlation, both in tension and compression, while experimental data fitting of finite-element analyses is only adopted for the determination of the second invariant coefficient in the nonlinear regime. Mechanical data are clearly porosity dependent, and they are given for both the cubic and the honeycomb infill pattern. Local strain spikes due to the presence of defects are observed and measured: those falling in the range 70-100% lead to macro-crack development and, ultimately, to failure. Results suggest the significant potential attached to FFF printing of PHBH for customizable medical devices which are biocompatible and mechanically resilient.

Computation of the effective mechanical response of biological networks accounting for large configuration changes.

The asymptotic homogenization technique is involved to derive the effective elastic response of biological membranes viewed as repetitive beam networks. Thereby, a systematic methodology is established, allowing the prediction of the overall mechanical properties of biological membranes in the nonlinear regime, reflecting the influence of the geometrical and mechanical micro-parameters of the network structure on the overall response of the equivalent continuum. Biomembranes networks are classified based on nodal connectivity, so that we analyze in this work 3, 4 and 6-connectivity networks, which are representative of most biological networks. The individual filaments of the network are described as undulated beams prone to entropic elasticity, with tensile moduli determined from their persistence length. The effective micropolar continuum evaluated as a continuum substitute of the biological network has a kinematics reflecting the discrete network deformation modes, involving a nodal displacement and a microrotation. The statics involves the classical Cauchy stress and internal moments encapsulated into couple stresses, which develop internal work in duality to microcurvatures reflecting local network undulations. The relative ratio of the characteristic bending length of the effective micropolar continuum to the unit cell size determines the relevant choice of the equivalent medium. In most cases, the Cauchy continuum is sufficient to model biomembranes. The peptidoglycan network may exhibit a re-entrant hexagonal configuration due to thermal or pressure fluctuations, for which micropolar effects become important. The homogenized responses are in good agreement with FE simulations performed over the whole network. The predictive nature of the employed homogenization technique allows the identification of a strain energy density of a hyperelastic model, for the purpose of performing structural calculations of the shape evolutions of biomembranes.

Identification of couple-stress moduli of vertebral trabecular bone based on the 3D internal architectures.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a homogeneous, orthotropic couple-stress continuum model as a substitute of the 3D periodic heterogeneous cellular solid model of vertebral trabecular bone. Vertebral trabecular bone is modeled as a porous material with an idealized periodic structure made of 3D open cubic cells, which is effectively orthotropic. The chosen architecture is based on studies of samples taken from the central part of vertebral bodies. The effective properties are obtained based on the response of the representative volume element under prescribed boundary conditions. Mixed boundary conditions comprising both traction and displacement boundary conditions are applied on the structure boundaries. In this contribution, the effective mechanical constants of the effective couple-stress continuum are deduced by an equivalent strain energy method. The characteristic lengths for bending and torsion are identified from the resulting homogenized orthotropic moduli. We conduct this study computationally using a finite element approach. Vertebral trabecular bone is modeled either as a cellular solid or as a two-phase material consisting of bone tissue (stiff phase) forming a trabecular network, and a surrounding soft tissue referring to the bone marrow present in the pores. Both the bone tissue forming the network and the pores are assumed to be homogeneous linear elastic, and isotropic media. The scale effects on the predicted couple stress moduli of these networks are investigated by varying the size of the bone specimens over which the boundary conditions are applied. The analysis using mixed boundary conditions gives results that are independent of unit cell size when computing the first couple stress tensor, while it is dependent on the cell size as to the second couple stress tensor moduli. This study provides overall guidance on how the size of the trabecular specimen influence couple stresses elastic moduli of cellular materials, with focus on bones. The developed approach is quite general and applicable to any heterogeneous cellular and composite materials.