Multiscale Approach to Understand the Multiphysics Phenomena in Bone Adaptation - Multiscale Computer Modeling in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering - page 30

Multiscale Approach to Understand
the Multiphysics Phenomena
in Bone Adaptation
Thibault Lemaire and Salah Naili
Abstract The ability of bone tissue to adapt itself to its physical environment is
the research focus of several teams all over the world. If the physical stimuli
playing a role in bone remodelling are often identified, how they act and are
converted into a cellular response is still an open question. The aim of this paper is,
in a first part, to propose an overview on the physical factors participating in the
bone remodelling process. In a second part, we present some recent developments
concerning the implications of hydro-electro-chemical couplings that could
modify the bone adaptation process. Since the phenomena that are involved in this
mechanism are related both to the mechanical solicitations of the tissue and the
physical phenomena in the vicinity of bone cells, different scales, from the organ
to the cell, should be considered to go deeper in its understanding. That is why a
multiscale strategy based on periodic homogenization has been carried out to
propagate the multiphysics description at the cellular scale toward the macroscopic
scale of the tissue. This multi-level approach is so adapted to connect macroscopic
physical information to microscopic phenomena, et vice versa. Thus, using con-
venient simulations, we have brought a new light on classical interrogations
dealing with bone adaptation. These five questions are: i. Can the sole hydro-
mechanical coupling describe the poro-mechanical behaviour of bone or should we
consider a modified Biot model including electro-chemical effects?; ii. Similarly,
is the classical Darcy law sufficient to describe the bone interstitial fluid flow?;
iii. What is the nature of the stress-induced electric potentials that can be measured
in vivo?; iv. What are the consequences of the electro-chemical couplings on the
T. Lemaire ( & ) S. Naili
Université Paris-Est Laboratoire Modélisation et Simulation Multi Echelle,
MSME UMR 8208 CNRS 61 Avenue du Général de Gaulle,
94010 Créteil cedex, France
e-mail: [e-mail]