A microstructure based mechanical model for planar fibrous scaffolds.

Cardiac valve and myocardium tissue regeneration has consistently raised interest for cell-seeded/microintegrated planar fibrous scaffolds. Electrospun constructs, decellularized tissues and collagen/fibrin gels often show a similar microstructure mainly characterized by the fibrous network topology. Microstructure based mechanical modeling enable fabrication parameters and scaffolds morphology to be related to mesomacro mechanical response. A novel approach to (1) characterize the material fibers network microarchitecture, (2) reproduce stochastically equivalent fiber network models, and (3) predict the mechanical response at meso-macro level is presented in this work. Electron micrographs…