Tissue engineering may constitute a promising alternative to current strategies in ligament repair, providing that suitable scaffolds and culture conditions are proposed. The objective of the present contribution is to present the design and instrumentation of a novel OPEN ACCESSProcesses 2014, 2 168 multi-chamber tension-torsion bioreactor dedicated to ligament tissue engineering. A preliminary biological evaluation of a new braided scaffold within this bioreactor under dynamic loading is reported, starting with the development of a dedicated seeding protocol validated from static cultures. The results of these preliminary biological characterizations confirm that the present combination of scaffold, seeding protocol and bioreactor may enable us to head towards a suitable ligament tissue-engineered construct.

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Simulation is an indispensable technique to evaluate the performance of computer networks, because the continuous growth of network scale and diversity. In this paper, the modeling of EPA protocol in OPNET modeler, a simulation tool of control system network is developed. These configurable EPA protocol models allow to easily build Factory Numerical Device Control System (FNDCS) simulation with different network topologies for all kinds of discrete manufacturing factory, so that the dynamic performance issues could be studied during the planning stage and network performance problems could be caught ahead of the implementation stage. An example of using those models to a network of FDECS on OPNET Modeler as well as the network performance simulation results is also included in this paper.

Advanced bioreactors are essential for meeting the complex requirements of in vitro ligament tissue engineering. A novel bioreactor system for the functional tissue engineering of ligaments, combined with culture medium perfusion over long periods of time and capability to apply cyclic mechanical loadings to three-dimensional scaffolds independently housed in six chambers, was developed. Well-controlled mechanical stimulations (resolution of <0.01mm for translational and <0.1 for rotational stress ) could be applied to the growing tissue, especially to tissue engineered anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The novel bioreactor could apply independent tensile/compressive stresses along the same axis and two-way torsions stimulation at the same time. A new type of scaffold relaxation compensation device which could adapt to a range of scaffold length of the changes and be able to realize independently online compensation was designed. The movement control strategies were proposed. This bioreactor is suitable for the tissue engineering of the human knee joint ACLs in both research and clinical applications.