MODELO NUME´RICO MICROMECAˆ NICO PARA SCAFFOLD DE HIDROXIAPATITA COM CULTURA CELULAR

Nowadays scaffolds and hydroxyapatite biomaterials have been widely used in the biomedical field. The biomechanical engineering is continuously improving methods and materials to analyze and optimize such porous media. The purpose of this article is to implement some methodology discussed in the literature to compare the results of micromechanical with normal mechanical finite elements simulations. The strength and stiffness of the material have been predicted beyond statistical correlations with porosity or empirical structureproperty relationships, as to resolve the material-immanent microstructures governing the overall mechanical behavior. A homogenization procedure in the context of the continuum micromechanics provides the macroscopic mechanical properties based in the microstructure and composition of the material. In this work the representative volume element of the porous polycrystals consists of hydroxyapatite needles and spherical pores. Other authors tested the micromechanical model with experimental sets on the basis of biomaterial-independent elastic and strength properties of hydroxyapatite. A two-dimension example programmed in MATLAB is depicted in this work simulating a bone scaffold with bone cells. We recognize the potential of micromechanical modeling in improving biomaterial design, through optimization of key parameters such as porosities or geometries of microstructures, in order to reach desired values for biomaterial stiffness or strength.