Small diameter tissue - engineered arteries improve their mechanical and functional properties when they are mechanically stimulated. Applying a suitable stress and-or strain with or without a cycle to the scaffolds and cells during the culturing process resides in our ability to generate a suitable mechanical model. Collagen gel is one of the most used scaffolds in vascular tissue engineering, mainly because it is the principal constituent of the extracellular matrix for vascular cells in human. The mechanical modeling of such a material is not a trivial task, mainly for its viscoelastic nature. Computational and experimental methods for developing a suitable model for collagen gels are of primary importance for the field. In this research, we focused on mechanical properties of collagen gels under unconfined compression. First, mechanical viscoelastic models are discussed and framed in the control systemtheory. Second,models are fitted using system identification. Several models are evaluated and two nonlinear models are proposed:Mooney - Rivlin inspired and Hammerstein models. Theresults suggest that Mooney - Rivlin andHammerstein models succeed in describing the mechanical behavior of collagen gels for cyclic tests on scaffolds (with best fitting parameters 58.3 per cent and .75.8 per cent, resp.). When Akaike criterion is used, the best is the Mooney - Rivlin inspired model.
Irastorza, R. M., Drouin, B., Blangino, E., & Mantovani, D. (2015). Mathematical modeling of uniaxial mechanical properties of collagen gel scaffolds for vascular tissue engineering. The Scientific World Journal,2015,Article ID 859416
10.1155/2015/859416
Irastorza, Ramiro M., Drouin, Bernard, Blangino, Eugenia, Mantovani, Diego. 2015. "Mathematical modeling of uniaxial mechanical properties of collagen gel scaffolds for vascular tissue engineering". The Scientific World Journal 2015:Article ID 859416.
Recuperado de http://ri.agro.uba.ar/greenstone3/library/collection/arti/document/2015irastorza