A micro-sphere-based remodelling formulation for anisotropic biological tissues

Soft biological tissues possess a pronounced composite-type multi-scale structure together with strongly anisotropic mechanical properties. A fibre-like network structure is characteristic for this kind of materials. If the tissue is exposed to mechanical loading, the initially possibly unstructured collagen fibre network tends to reorient with the local dominant stretch direction – it adapts according to the particular loading conditions. In general, biological tissues exhibit changes in mass, also denoted as growth, and internal structure, which is commonly referred to as remodelling. In this regard, an anisotropic micromechanically motivated model that incorporates such time-dependent remodelling effects will be discussed in this contribution. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)