Implantation of biodegradable scaffold is considered as a promising method to treat bone disorders, but knowledge of the dynamic bone repair process is extremely limited. In this study, based on the representative volume cell of a periodic scaffold, the influence of rehabilitation exercise duration per day on the bone repair was investigated by a computational framework. The framework coupled scaffold degradation and bone remodeling. The scaffold degradation was described by a function of stochastic hydrolysis independent of mechanical stimulation, and the bone formation was remodeled by a function of the mechanical stimulation, i.e., strain energy density. Then, numerical simulations were performed to study the dynamic bone repair process. The results showed that the scaffold degradation and the bone formation in the process were competitive. An optimal exercise duration per day emerged. All exercise durations promoted the bone maturation with a final Young's modulus of 1.9 ± 0.3 GPa. The present study connects clinical rehabilitation and fundamental research, and is helpful to understand the bone repair process and further design bone scaffold for bone tissue engineering.
This paper studies the plastic collapse mechanisms of uniaxially-loaded cylindrical shell-plate periodic honeycombs with identical mass (or relative density) but varying geometric parameters, by series of in-plane and out-of-plane experiments and finite element numerical simulations. The coupled experimental-numerical results show that mechanical properties of the honeycomb can be optimized in all three loading cases, thanks to the complementary changes of the mechanical properties of cylindrical shell and plate as the geometric parameters vary. The work presents a concept to optimize lattice structures by combining different substructures, and can be used in designing new low-density honeycomb structures with desired mechanical requirements but less base materials and weight.
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