Design of Biomimetic Porous Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

Abstract

The fluid flow dynamics on the porous scaffolds and their static responses on the adjacent bone are very crucial parameters for bone adaptation. Researchers are trying to develop different algorithms to design biomimetic porous scaffolds incorporating bone tissue engineering. In this present work, three types of biomimetic heterogeneous porous scaffolds (HPS) were designed with the help of the Voronoi tessellation method and Swarm Intelligence and those were analysed under fluid perfusion as well as under static loading conditions. In computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, the wall shear stress (WSS) and the permeability of the porous scaffolds were compared to the natural trabecular bone to understand their hydrodynamic responses. In static analysis, the von Mises stresses of the Ti₆Al₄V scaffolds were checked to ensure no-yield condition. The strain energy density (SED) distributions were also studied on the neighbouring bone region of the femur greater trochanter to obtain stress shielding (SS) patterns and these findings were then compared with the natural trabecular bone at the same anatomical region. The outcome parameters, viz. the induced WSS, von Mises stress, the permeability, and SS of the scaffold, are found to be independent of the scaffold architecture. The von Mises stress and permeability increased with an increase in porosities, while the induced WSS and SS nature of the scaffolds showed the reverse trend. The results showed that the HPS designed based on the Swarm Intelligence incorporating Physarum Polycephalum algorithm offered the least SS level of 41.096 for 75% porous HPS, which may be considered the most promising result. Considering all the parameters, the novel designed scaffold based on Swarm Intelligence showed the most trabecular bone mimicking nature compared to the other scaffolds.