Numerical implementation of an osmo-poro-visco-hyperelastic finite element solver: application to the intervertebral disc

Abstract

This work deals with the finite element (FE) implementation of a biphasic poroelastic formulation specifically developed to address the intricate behaviour of the Intervertebral Disc (IVD) and other highly hydrated soft tissues. This formulation is implemented in custom FE solver V-Biomech, being the validation performed with a lumbar IVD model, which was compared against the analogous FE model of Williams et al. and the experiments of Tyrrell et al. Good agreement with these benchmarks was achieved, meaning that V-Biomech and its novel poroelastic formulation are a viable alternative for simulation of biphasic soft tissues.

Keywords:

• Constitutive modelling
• numerical implementation
• finite element method
• poroelasticity
• soft tissue
• intervertebral disc

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to express his gratitude to “(Portugal) for PhD grant SFRH/BD/63882/2009 and LAETA project UIDB/50022/2020 (through IDMEC).”

Both authors would like to thank Professors Jacques Huyghe (University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland) and Damien Lacroix (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom) for the useful discussions on this topic.

Note to the reader

V-Biomech executable file is free to download and use.

Download link: https://github.com/INSIGNEO/VBiomech

Source code is available per request.

Disclosure statement

All the authors certify that there is no conflict of interest with any financial organization regarding the material discussed in this manuscript.

Statements of ethical approval

No ethical considerations apply to this study.

Additional information

Funding

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia