Heterogeneous minimal surface porous scaffold design using the distance field and radial basis functions

Abstract

This paper presented an effective method for the 3D heterogeneous porous scaffold design of human tissue using triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) internal pore architectures. First, an implicit solid representing the smooth 3D scalar field for the porosity distribution was reconstructed by interpolating the geometric positions of control points and porosity values defined at those points using an implicit interpolation algorithm based on the thin-plate radial basis function. After generating the implicit solid representing the smooth 3D scalar field for the porosity distribution, a functionally graded tissue scaffold with accurately controlled porosity distribution was designed using the TPMS-based unit cell libraries. Numerical results showed that the proposed scaffold design method has the potential benefits for accurately controlling the spatial porosity distribution within an arbitrarily shaped scaffold while keeping the advantage of the TPMS-based unit cell libraries.