The effect to flow rate characteristic on biodegradation of bone scaffold

Abstract

This paper proposes an improved modeling approach for bone scaffolds biodegradation. In this study, the numerical analysis procedure and computer-based simulation were performed for the bone scaffolds with varying porosities in determining the wall shear stresses and the permeabilities along with their influences on the scaffolds biodegradation process while the bio-fluids flow through within followed with the change in the flow rates. Based on the experimental study by immersion testing from 0 to 72 hours of the time period, the specimens with different morphologies of the commercial bone scaffolds were collected into three groups samples of 30%, 41%, and 55% porosities. As the representative of the cancellous bone morphology, the morphological degradation was observed by using 3-D CAD scaffold models based on microcomputed tomography images. By applying the boundary conditions to the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models, the wall shear stresses within the scaffolds due to fluid flow rates variation had been simulated and determined before and after degradation. The increase of fluid flow rates tends to raise the pressure drop for scaffold models with porosities lower than 50% before degradation. As the porosities increases, the pressure drop decreases with an increase in permeability within the scaffold. The flow rates have significant effects on scaffolds with higher pressure drops by introducing the wall shear stresses with the highest values and lower permeability. These findings indicate the importance of using accurate computational models to estimate shear stress and determine experimental conditions in perfusion bioreactors for tissue engineering more accurate results will be achieved to indicate the natural distributions of fluid flow velocity, wall shear stress, and pressure.