The effect of pore geometry on the mechanical properties of 3D-printed bone scaffold due to compressive loading

Abstract Bone substitutes are derived from biological products or synthetic bone substitutes such as ceramics, polymers, metals, and organic or non-organic bone substitutes. Emerging three-dimensional (3D)-printing technologies are enabling the fabrication of bone scaffold with the precise specifications. 3D-printing allows controlled material placement for configuring porous tissue scaffolds with tailored properties such as mechanical stiffness, nutrient transport, and biological growth. Therefore, bone scaffolds with good biological and mechanical properties are needed to be used as a bone substitute in bone tissue engineering. However, inadequate mechanical strength is the major problem in current bone scaffolds fabrication. Therefore, the aim of this study is to design and to simulate the mechanical properties of 3D printed polylactic acid (PLA) bone scaffold with different pore geometries, which are circular, square, hexagonal and triangular. The scaffolds were designed and were simulated by using SolidWorks in determining the mechanical properties. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the PLA bone scaffold indicates that scaffolds with hexagonal pore shape has compressive strength of 241.0 MPa, which is matches with the human bone properties.