Computational multiscale methods for tissue biomechanics

This special issue of the International Journal for Computational Methods in Engineering Science and Mechanics collects recent developments in computational biomechanics with a special insight on multiscale mechanisms. It has been planned in occasion of the mini-symposium Computational Multiscale Methods for Tissue Biomechanics organized during the 11th World Congress of Computational Mechanics jointly-organized with the 5th European Conference on Computational Mechanics, held in Barcelona (Spain) on July, 20th–25th 2014. This mini-symposium brought together front-line researchers who proposed multidisciplinary, original, and groundbreaking findings and contributions in multiscale computational biomechanics.

In the field of biomechanics and life sciences, tissue modeling and simulation can be indeed considered as a frontier and challenging task. Both mineralized (e.g., bone, tooth enamel and dentin, cartilage) and soft tissues (e.g., skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels) exhibit a structured and hierarchical arrangement, characterized by organized biostructures at different length scales (from nano up to the macroscale). This is the case of collagen fibrils and fibers in soft connective tissues, of actin and myosin myofibrils in muscle's sarcomere, of collagen lamellae in bone's osteon. Tissue mechanics and physiological functions are highly affected by such a hierarchical and multiscale organization, as well as by a number of coupled biochemical and mechanobiological processes. Moreover, tissue disorders and diseases can be generally related with histological and biochemical alterations at different scales.

The key goal of in silico approaches in the field of tissue biomechanics is to develop computational methods and models that are able to integrate structural properties of the tissue and its physiological functions. In this way, reliable, predictive, and patient-specific biomechanical analyses could be oriented for diagnosis and therapy optimization.

In this context, there is the great need for the development of accurate tissue constitutive models accounting for highly nonlinear and time-depending effects, governed by different physics and involving mechanisms at different length scales. To this aim, multiscale and multiphysics methods are giving to-date the most promising results. Accordingly, advanced single-scale and single-physics models of typical tissue substructures, inter-scale and inter-physics consistent relationships supported by experimental evidences, homogenization approaches, refined numerical methods and applications, can contribute towards the definition of accurate predictive theories and advanced computational formulations for tissue biomechanics.

Under this perspective and although not exhaustive, this issue presents a snapshot at the cutting edge of the field and collects front-line researches ranging from organ-level down to the cellular scale, and opening to a renewed comprehension of: mechano-cellular mechanisms [6]; multi-physics effects [3]; the relationship between structure and function [2,7,8]. The issue welcomes also a review on numerical methods for the simulation of cardiovascular macro-structures [5], and papers on computational models describing the interaction between biological tissues and medical devices [1] and on experimental techniques for the description of tissue constitutive properties [4,9].

The guest editors would like to thank the Editorial Board of the International Journal for Computational Methods in Engineering Science and Mechanics for hosting this Special Issue, especially J.N. Reddy for his helpful guidance, as well as the reviewers for their valuable assessments and the authors for their high-quality contributions.