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Published March 15, 2012 | public
Journal Article

Modeling of cardiac muscle thin films: Pre-stretch, passive and active behavior

Abstract

Recent progress in tissue engineering has made it possible to build contractile bio-hybrid materials that undergo conformational changes by growing a layer of cardiac muscle on elastic polymeric membranes. Further development of such muscular thin films for building actuators and powering devices requires exploring several design parameters, which include the alignment of the cardiac myocytes and the thickness/Young's modulus of elastomeric film. To more efficiently explore these design parameters, we propose a 3-D phenomenological constitutive model, which accounts for both the passive deformation including pre-stretch and the active behavior of the cardiomyocytes. The proposed 3-D constitutive model is implemented within a finite element framework, and can be used to improve the current design of bio-hybrid thin films and help developing bio-hybrid constructs capable of complex conformational changes.

Additional Information

© 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Accepted 4 October 2011. Available online 9 January 2012. This work has been supported by the Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center under NSF award number DMR-0820484(KB), DMR-0213805(KKP), and NIH grant 1 R01 HL079126(KKP). We are grateful to the Center of Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University for the use of their cleanroom facilities, to Alexander P. Nesmith for developing the brick patterned stamps, and to Harvard SEAS Academic Computing for their support.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023