Affiliations: School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
Note: [] Currently at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Dr. Dimitrios V. Papavassiliou, 100 East Boyd St. SEC-T 335, Norman, OK 73019, USA. Tel.: +1 405 325 1511; Fax: +1 405 325 5813; E-mail: dvpapava@ou.edu.
Abstract: Current tissue engineering technologies involve the seeding of cells on porous scaffolds, within which the cells can proliferate and differentiate, when cultured in bioreactors. The flow of culture media through the scaffolds generates stresses that are important for both cell differentiation and cell growth. A recent study [Appl. Phys. Lett. 97 (2010), 024101] showed that flow-induced stresses inside highly porous and randomly structured scaffolds follow a three-point gamma probability density function (p.d.f.). The goal of the present study is to further investigate whether the same p.d.f. can also describe the distribution of stresses in structured porous scaffolds, what is the range of scaffold porosity for which the distribution is valid, and what is the physical reason for such behavior. To do that, the p.d.f. of flow-induced stresses in different scaffold geometries were calculated via flow dynamics simulations. It was found that the direction of flow relative to the internal architecture of the scaffolds is important for stress distributions. The stress distributions follow a common distribution within statistically acceptable accuracy, when the flow direction does not coincide with the direction of internal structural elements of the scaffold.
