| The growing usage of printed bio scaffolds in the field of regenerative medicine has made this field very
important in biomedical engineering. In this regard, three-dimensional printing (3D) technique needs
bio-materials with higher mechanical and biological performance. The biomaterials with high mechanical
performance beside its bio compatibility are limited. A novel bio-material made of Alginate,
Hyaluronic acid, Halloysite Nanotube and Polyvinylidene Fluoride was used and characterized for printing
cartilage bio scaffolds through numerical studies. CaCl2 was used for crosslinking of biomaterial.
Scanning Electron Microscopy, mechanical tests (tensile and compressive test), MTT assay were conducted
for evaluating this novel biomaterial. Different structures of bio material were simulated for
numerical studies. The numerical study was performed in ANSYS 18 using three parameter Mooney–
Rivlin model. According to experimental and numerical results, Halloysite Nanotube increases the tensile
and compressive strength of biomaterial up to 47%. Results show that biomaterial have good mechanical
performance due to mechanical forces required for cartilage bio scaffolds besides its high biological performance.
Polyvinylidene fluoride reduces the mechanical performance while increasing the cell viability.
MTT assay results performed on day 0, day 2 and day 6 show increase in cell number to be about twice for
biomaterial containing 40 mg/ml alginate, 40 mg/ml halloysite nanotube, 10 mg/ml hyaluronic acid and 1
w/v Polyvinylidene fluoride. Numerical simulation shows high mechanical performance of bio material in
different scaffolds structure. The best structure of bio scaffolds was achieved with 0.4 mm nozzle diameter
and 0.4 space between rows. |