Triply periodic minimal surface based geometry design of bio-scaffolds

In view of advancement in additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) technique, triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) emerges as innovative tool for designing porous bone scaffolds. However, use of common CAD software for the design of such complex structures are aggregately inefficient, time exhausting, and can lead to processing setbacks. In order to overcome such processing issues, this paper uses easy to implement implicit functions based methodology for creation of gyroid and diamond porous structures. Further, on successful generation of these scaffolds, generic STL format has been prepared. We introduce a method for generating periodic porous scaffolds frameworks from TPMS, which results in geometries that are easier to decompose into digital parts ready for direct 3D printing. The effect of changing Z factor (a linear term added to implicit functions used) and porosity percentage to meet the desired porosity is also shown. Through a range of design demonstration and rendering effect, the potential to design complex scaffolds is shown.

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