Modelling the anisotropic inelastic response of polymeric scaffolds for in situ tissue engineering applications - Preprint

In situ tissue engineering offers an innovative solution for replacement valves and grafts in cardiovascular medicine. In this approach, a scaffold, which can be obtained by polymer electro- spinning, is implanted into the human body and then infiltrated by cells, eventually replacing the scaffold with native tissue. In silico simulations of the whole process in patient-specific models, including implantation, growth and degradation, are very attractive in order to study the factors that might influence the end result. In our research we focused on the mechanical behavior of the polymeric scaffold and its short-term response. Following a recently proposed constitutive model for the anisotropic inelastic behavior of fibrous polymeric materials, we present here its numerical implementation in a finite element framework. The numerical model is developed as user material for commercial finite element software. The verification of the implementation is performed for ele- mentary deformations. Furthermore, a parallel plate test is proposed as a large-scale representative example and the model is validated by comparison with experiments.