2016) and collagen-GAG scaffolds (Mccoy et al. However, in many tissue engineering experiments, the scaffolds have a highly irregular pore geometry, e.g., silk fibroin (SF) scaffolds (Melke et al. For scaffolds with a regular pore geometry, it usually suffices to analyze only a small unit-cell of the sample, since the results for the full sample can be obtained by repetition of the unit-cell results (Marin and Lacroix 2015 Hendrikson et al. To reduce the computational cost, CFD analysis has been applied on one or a few unit-cells of the scaffold (Zhao et al. However, a recent study found that the WSS calculated based on idealized scaffolds had considerable differences from the one calculated based on a realistic scaffold geometry (Marin and Lacroix 2015). In many studies, the scaffolds were idealized with a regular geometry due to the limitations on real geometry meshing and high computational cost (Olivares et al. Thus, to determine the flow rate for the bioreactor, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches have been used for calculating the fluidic environment within scaffolds with specific micro-structural geometries (Stops et al. The resultant WSS on cells is dependent on the flow rate applied to the bioreactors (Guyot et al. It has been demonstrated that a WSS in the range of 0.11–10 mPa can stimulate mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to differentiate toward the osteogenic lineage (McCoy and O’Brien 2010), whereas a WSS in a higher range of 0.55–24 mPa can stimulate bone cells to produce mineralized extracellular matrix (ECM) (Vetsch et al. In such experiments, the mechanical stimulus is often applied by using perfusion bioreactors in which a fluid flow generates a wall shear stress (WSS) to the cell (Bancroft et al. This concept is widely explored in bone tissue engineering (BTE) experiments to stimulate cells to form bone tissue. It is well known that mechanical stimulation can regulate cellular activities. Importantly, the central process unit time needed to run the model is considerably low. It is demonstrated that this approach can capture the WSS distribution in most regions within the scaffold. This technique is based on a multiscale computational fluid dynamics approach. In this study, we propose a low-computational cost and feasible technique for quantifying the micro-fluidic environment within the scaffolds, which have highly irregular pore geometries. This complexity in scaffold geometry implies high computational costs for simulating the precise fluidic environment within the scaffolds. However, biomaterial scaffolds used in tissue engineering experiments typically have highly irregular pore geometries. Simulating the fluidic environment within scaffolds will be important for gaining a better insight into the actual mechanical stimulation on cells in a tissue engineering experiment. The WSS on cells depends on the nature of the micro-fluidic environment within scaffolds under medium perfusion. To apply fluid-induced wall shear stress (WSS) on cells, perfusion bioreactors have been commonly used in tissue engineering experiments. Mechanical stimulation can regulate cellular behavior, e.g., differentiation, proliferation, matrix production and mineralization.
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