Computational model of damage-induced growth in soft biological tissues considering the mechanobiology of healing

authored by: Meike Gierig, Peter Wriggers, Michele Marino
Abstract: Healing in soft biological tissues is a chain of events on different time and length scales. This work presents a computational framework to capture and couple important mechanical, chemical and biological aspects of healing. A molecular-level damage in collagen, i.e., the interstrand delamination, is addressed as source of plastic deformation in tissues. This mechanism initiates a biochemical response and starts the chain of healing. In particular, damage is considered to be the stimulus for the production of matrix metalloproteinases and growth factors which in turn, respectively, degrade and produce collagen. Due to collagen turnover, the volume of the tissue changes, which can result either in normal or pathological healing. To capture the mechanisms on continuum scale, the deformation gradient is multiplicatively decomposed in inelastic and elastic deformation gradients. A recently proposed elasto-plastic formulation is, through a biochemical model, coupled with a growth and remodeling description based on homogenized constrained mixtures. After the discussion of the biological species response to the damage stimulus, the framework is implemented in a mixed nonlinear finite element formulation and a biaxial tension and an indentation tests are conducted on a prestretched flat tissue sample. The results illustrate that the model is able to describe the evolutions of growth factors and matrix metalloproteinases following damage and the subsequent growth and remodeling in the respect of equilibrium. The interplay between mechanical and chemo-biological events occurring during healing is captured, proving that the framework is a suitable basis for more detailed simulations of damage-induced tissue response.
Organisation(s): Institute of Continuum Mechanics
External Organisation(s): Tor Vergata University of Rome
Type: Article
Journal: Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology
Volume: 20
Pages: 1297–1315
No. of pages: 19
ISSN: 1617-7959
Publication date: 08.2021
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Biotechnology, Modelling and Simulation, Mechanical Engineering
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-021-01445-5 (Access: Open)
: Details in the research portal "Research@Leibniz University"

BibTeX

@article{5ed620fda4a94e8c9c5a5ba4bebb640b,
title = "Computational model of damage-induced growth in soft biological tissues considering the mechanobiology of healing",
abstract = "Healing in soft biological tissues is a chain of events on different time and length scales. This work presents a computational framework to capture and couple important mechanical, chemical and biological aspects of healing. A molecular-level damage in collagen, i.e., the interstrand delamination, is addressed as source of plastic deformation in tissues. This mechanism initiates a biochemical response and starts the chain of healing. In particular, damage is considered to be the stimulus for the production of matrix metalloproteinases and growth factors which in turn, respectively, degrade and produce collagen. Due to collagen turnover, the volume of the tissue changes, which can result either in normal or pathological healing. To capture the mechanisms on continuum scale, the deformation gradient is multiplicatively decomposed in inelastic and elastic deformation gradients. A recently proposed elasto-plastic formulation is, through a biochemical model, coupled with a growth and remodeling description based on homogenized constrained mixtures. After the discussion of the biological species response to the damage stimulus, the framework is implemented in a mixed nonlinear finite element formulation and a biaxial tension and an indentation tests are conducted on a prestretched flat tissue sample. The results illustrate that the model is able to describe the evolutions of growth factors and matrix metalloproteinases following damage and the subsequent growth and remodeling in the respect of equilibrium. The interplay between mechanical and chemo-biological events occurring during healing is captured, proving that the framework is a suitable basis for more detailed simulations of damage-induced tissue response.",
keywords = "Damage-induced growth, Homogenized constrained mixtures, Mechanobiology of healing, Soft biological tissue mechanics",
author = "Meike Gierig and Peter Wriggers and Michele Marino",
note = "Funding Information: This work has been funded by the Masterplan SMART BIOTECS (Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Germany). MM acknowledges also the fundings of the Rita Levi Montalcini Program for Young Researchers (Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italy). ",
year = "2021",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1007/s10237-021-01445-5",
language = "English",
volume = "20",
pages = "1297–1315",
journal = "Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology",
issn = "1617-7959",
publisher = "Springer Verlag",
number = "4",
}