Multiscale Elasticity of Tissue Engineering Scaffolds with Tissue-Engineered Bone: A Continuum Micromechanics Approach

Abstract

Tissue engineering (TE) is the use of a combination of biological cells, engineering and materials methods, and of suitable biochemical and physicochemical factors, in order to improve or replace biological functions. It has brought the advent of entirely new classes of hierarchically organized, multiporous materials, consisting of both chemically and biologically produced parts. Here, we aim at contributing to the unsettled question of the mechanical functioning of bone tissue-engineering scaffolds with tissue-engineered bone—from a theoretical and applied mechanics viewpoint. Therefore, we build on recently developed microelasticity models for vertebrate bone and hydroxyapatite biomaterials, respectively. Tissue engineering scaffolds with tissue-engineered bone are micromechanically represented as tissue-engineered bone-coated macropores in a matrix built up by microporous hydroxyapatite polycrystals, based on an extension toward anisotropy, of Herve–Zaoui’s