In a previous study we demonstrated that submodels are influenced by the boundary conditions, inevitable when flow channels are chopped off. For the current study we therefore developed 渭CT based models of two complete scaffold geometries (one titanium and one hydroxyapatite). Imposing a 0.04 ml/min flow rate resulted in a surface area averaged wall shear stress of 1.41 mPa for titanium and 1.09 mPa for hydroxyapatite.
In order to get insight in required model size we subdivided the domain in regions of different size. From our results we propose a model size between 6 and 10 times the average pore size. The wall shears stress should be calculated on a region at least one pore size away from the boundaries.
These guidelines could be of use for computationally more costly simulations where it is not possible to simulate the complete scaffold domain.