Remodeling of soft tissues due to cell activity

Abstract

The continuum mechanical modeling of collagenous biological tissues is of interest in the field of biomedical engineering. Particularly, the change of material properties as a result of cell activity is of great interest, as chondrocyte (cartilage cell) implantation yields significant functional improvement. The aim of the contribution is to present the remodeling phenomenon of a cellular material due to cell activity, which results in synthesis of collagen type‐II fibers. For the experimental study, cellular condensed gel is mechanically stimulated in a bioreactor for four weeks. The change of the stiffness of the gel is measured in a compression test. The remodeling process is theoretically derived by an appropriate evolution law in the framework of continuum mechanics. (© 2014 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)