Minimal Surface Based Hybrid Cellular Material Model for Use in Healthcare Engineering

Abstract

Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (TPMS) is distinctive structure that supports numerous cellular activities and encapsulating trabecular bonemimicking hyperboloidal topography. They have emerged as a prospective choice in reconstructive orthopedic surgery. The hybrid design of these structures is an effective approach to constructing functional implant structures. In this study, we have used TPMS structures to develop the hybrid models with given transition boundaries to investigate the multi-morphology cellular material model for its effectiveness as scaffold use. Sigmoid function was employed to connect more than two TPMS structures, with a special shape at the transition boundary region. Furthermore, numerical simulation was performed to investigate the mechanical performance on hybrid model of IWP (I-graph-wrapped package curved surface) and Diamond (D) (both are the family of TPMS unit cell libraries) with accurately controlled porosity of 50%, 60%, 70% and 80%. The numerical results showed that the proposed hybrid scaffold architecture has the potential to be advantageous for accurately controlling the spatial porosity distribution to tailor the specific bone attributes while maintaining the benefit of the TPMS-based hybrid unit cell libraries. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.