Modeling of Destruction Processes of Trabecular Bone Tissue and its Replacement by Scaffolds with Stochastic Architecture

This paper uses finite element analysis to investigate the mechanical behavior of elementary representative volumes of porous bone tissue structures and their artificial substitutes. New results have been obtained from numerical modelling of the mechanical behavior and failure of three-dimensional geometric models of trabecular bone microstructure and bone implant models based on random two-dimensional structures. The structure of the implants was selected according to the morphometric parameters of trabecular bone structures to ensure a similar volume fraction of pores, thickness of the interconnected lattice of solid material, and internal surface area. The properties of bone tissue and biocompatible polylactide PLA were selected as the properties of the solid phase material of the structures. The present study of the obtained scaffold structures did not always show their satisfactory correspondence with the original trabecular structures in terms of mechanical behavior. Auxiliary problems, such as determining the required volume fraction of pores in the scaffold structure made of PLA polylactide material to resemble the effective elastic properties of the reference trabecular bone structure and calculating the elastic modulus of the solid phase material of the scaffold structure have been solved. In the future, the problem of creating an optimal bone scaffold structure can be solved by optimizing morphometric parameters in conjunction with the selection or modification of a biocompatible polymer material used in additive manufacturing. The practical significance of this approach lies in the possibility of subsequent manufacture of personalized biomedical devices for the treatment of bone tissue diseases, adapted to a specific patient.