Micromechanical Modeling of Gelatin-Based Nano-Composite Bone Scaffolds

In this study, Finite elements (FE) based micromechanical procedures were implemented for predicting the mechanical properties of Gelatin/Akermanite two-phased porous bio-nano composite scaffolds having bone substitute applications with different w.t. % and porosity distributions. At the first, 3-D representative volume elements (RVEs) with different sizes generated via developing the random algorithms considering the random distribution of inclusions and porosities in PYTHON to predict the overall mechanical behavior and to calculate the homogenized or effective Young's modulus of the porous nanocomposite scaffolds employing finite elements analyzes (FEA). The optimum size for the RVEs has been obtained. Afterward, such analyses' accuracy was validated by comparing it to data from the experimental compression test. An acceptable range of agreement between FEA predictions for various generated RVEs and experimental data from compression tests is observed, having discrepancy intervals from 6.68 % up to approximately 11%.