Orthotropic viscoelastic creep in cellular scaffolds

Abstract Recent measurements of Norway spruce have revealed stress-state-dependent normalized creep behavior, highlighting a gap in our fundamental understanding. This study examines whether the anisotropic response originates from the micro-structural, cellular nature of composite cell walls with varying tracheid types. Cell wall creep parameters are identified via surrogate-based inverse parameter determination, applied to hierarchical micro-mechanical and FEM models of increasing topological complexity up to the growth ring scale. Despite microstructural disorder, simulated creep curves converge toward a universal set of proportionality factors. The results indicate that directional creep behavior cannot be attributed solely to tissue scale topology, and that realistic predictions require the inclusion of non-linear material responses at stress concentration sites.