| Degradable hydrogels have recently become prominent materials in the field of tissue engineering. They can be submitted to two degradation process: hydrolytic and enzymatic. For hydrolytically degradable systems, results seem to differ between samples. Yet the reasons for such a phenomenon have not been clearly understood. The objective of this thesis is to establish a multiscale model for such hydrogels. With the hypothesis that cross-linking density varies within a cell-seeded hydrogel, the present thesis aims to interpret experimental results to model and predict their behavior. First, a three-dimensional cell distribution is generated based on the analysis of experimental microscopy images. Then, a finite difference and a finite element analysis are set to reproduce the behavior of a degrading hydrogel in time at both microscale (cells are singled out) and macroscale (cells are not distinct, the distribution is defined by cell density) using hexahedron elements. |
