Multiscale homogenisation of diffusion in enzymatically-calcified hydrogels.

Hydrogels are a promising class of material in biomedical and industrial applications, where both the mechanical and diffusion properties play an important role. The wide range of polymers that can be used and the different production methods allows these properties to be specifically tuned to a high degree for their application. Producing tough hydrogels with high stiffness has been a long-standing challenge that has recently been addressed by mineralisation methods.

Review paper: The importance of consideration of collagen cross-links in computational models of collagen-based tissues.

Collagen as the main protein in Extra Cellular Matrix (ECM) is the main load-bearing component of fibrous tissues. Nanostructure and architecture of collagen fibrils play an important role in mechanical behavior of these tissues. Extensive experimental and theoretical studies have so far been performed to capture these properties, but none of the current models realistically represent the complexity of network mechanics because still less is known about the collagen's inner structure and its effect on the mechanical properties of tissues.

Numerical analysis of the impact of cytoskeletal actin filament density alterations onto the diffusive vesicle-mediated cell transport.

The interior of a eukaryotic cell is a highly complex composite material which consists of water, structural scaffoldings, organelles, and various biomolecular solutes. All these components serve as obstacles that impede the motion of vesicles. Hence, it is hypothesized that any alteration of the cytoskeletal network may directly impact or even disrupt the vesicle transport.

Thermomechanical Modeling of Microstructure Evolution Caused by Strain-Induced Crystallization.

The present contribution deals with the thermomechanical modeling of the strain-induced crystallization in unfilled polymers. This phenomenon significantly influences mechanical and thermal properties of polymers and has to be taken into consideration when planning manufacturing processes as well as applications of the final product. In order to simultaneously capture both kinds of effects, the model proposed starts by introducing a triple decomposition of the deformation gradient and furthermore uses thermodynamic framework for material modeling based on the Coleman-Noll procedure and minimum principle of the dissipation potential, which requires suitable assumptions for the Helmholtz free energy and the dissipation potential.

Determination of the geometry of the RVE for cancellous bone by using the effective complex shear modulus.

This contribution deals with the application of the inverse homogenization method to the determination of geometrical properties of cancellous bone. The approach represents a combination of an extended version of the Marquardt-Levenberg method with the multiscale finite element method. The former belongs to the group of gradient-based optimization strategies, while the latter is a numerical homogenization method, suitable for the modeling of materials with a highly heterogeneous microstructure.

Investigation of the influence of reflection on the attenuation of cancellous bone.

The model proposed in this paper is based on the fact that the reflection might have a significant contribution to the attenuation of the acoustic waves propagating through the cancellous bone. The numerical implementation of the mentioned effect is realized by the development of a new representative volume element that includes an infinitesimally thin 'transient' layer on the contact surface of the bone and the marrow. This layer serves to model the amplitude transformation of the incident wave by the transition through media with different acoustic impedances and to take into account the energy loss due to the reflection.