Effects of the 3D Geometry Reconstruction on the Estimation of 3D Porous Scaffold Permeability

Abstract

3D scaffolds for tissue engineering typically need to adopt a dynamic culture to foster cell distribution and survival throughout the scaffold. It is, therefore, crucial to know fluids' behavior inside the scaffold architecture, especially for complex porous ones. Here we report a comparison between simulated and measured permeability of a porous 3D scaffold, focusing on different modeling parameters. The scaffold features were extracted by microcomputed tomography (μCT) and representative volume elements were used for the computational fluid-dynamic analyses. The objective was to investigate the sensitivity of the model to the degree of detail of the μCT image and the elements of the mesh. These findings highlight the pros and cons of the modeling strategy adopted and the importance of such parameters in analyzing fluid behavior in 3D scaffolds.