Abstract
Even when damaged by injury or disease bone tissue has the remarkable ability to regenerate. When this process is limited by large size bone defects, tissue engineering is responsible for restoring, maintaining or improving tissue function. Scaffolds are support structures, designed to be implanted in the damaged site, supporting mechanical loads and protecting the regenerating bone tissue. In this paper, 3D-printed PLA scaffolds with three different porosity values and two different geometries were experimentally and numerically characterized. Micro-CT analysis showed that fused filament fabrication can be used to produce scaffolds with the desired porosity and 100% of interconnected pores. Under monotonical compression, scaffolds apparent compressive modulus increased from 89 to 918 MPa, while yield stress increased from 2.9 to 27.5 MPa as porosity decreased from 70 to 30%. Open porosity decreased up to 8% on aligned scaffolds and 14% on staggered scaffolds, after compression, while scaffold’s surface-to-volume ratio highest reduction (7.48 to 4.55 mm−1) was obtained with aligned low porosity scaffolds. Micro-CT volume reconstruction allowed for scaffold simplified numerical models to be built and analyzed. Excellent agreement was found when predicting scaffold’s apparent compressive modulus. Overall, it can be concluded that 3D printing is a viable scaffold manufacturing technique for trabecular bone replacement.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by FCT, through IDMEC under LAETA (project UIDB/50022/2020), CeFEMA (UID/CTM/04540/2019) and CERENA (UIDB/04028/2020). IPFN activities also received financial support from FCT through Projects UIDB/50010/2020 and UIDP/50010/2020.
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RB, MP, AM, and DR were involved in conceptualization. RB, MP, DR, VI, and MG were involved in methodology. RB, DR, and MG were involved in formal analysis and writing—original draft. RB, MP, AM, DR, VI, and MG were involved in investigation and resources. RB and DR were involved in software. RB and AM were involved in visualization. RB was responsible for supervision. AM was involved in data curation. MP, VI and MG were involved in writing—review and editing. VI and MG were involved in validation.
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Baptista, R., Pereira, M.F.C., Maurício, A. et al. Experimental and numerical characterization of 3D-printed scaffolds under monotonic compression with the aid of micro-CT volume reconstruction. Bio-des. Manuf. 4, 222–242 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-020-00122-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-020-00122-3