Fracture is a common physical injury. Its healing process involves complex biological activities at tissue, cellular and molecular levels and is affected by mechanical and biological factors. Over recent years, numerical simulation methods have been widely used to explore the mechanisms of fracture healing, design fixators and develop novel treatment strategies, etc. This paper mainly recommend the numerical methods used for simulating fracture healing and their latest research progress, which helps people better understand the mechanism of fracture healing, and also provides direction and guidance for the numerical simulation research of fracture healing in the future. First, the fracture healing process and its relationship with mechanical stimulation and biological factors are described. Then, the numerical models used for simulating fracture healing (including mechano-regulatory model, biological regulatory model and mechano-biological regulatory model) and corresponding modeling techniques (mainly including agent-based techniques and fuzzy logic controlling method) were summarized in particular. Finally, the future research directions in numerical simulation of fracture healing were preliminarily prospected.
In order to establish a bone scaffold with good biological properties, two kinds of new gradient triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) scaffolds, i.e., two-way linear gradient G scaffolds (L-G) and D, G fusion scaffold (N-G) were designed based on the gyroid (G) and diamond (D)-type TPMS in this study. The structural mechanical parameters of the two kinds of scaffolds were obtained through the compressive simulation. The flow property parameters were also obtained through the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation in this study, and the permeability of the two kinds of scaffolds were calculated by Darcy's law. The tissue differentiation areas of the two kinds of scaffolds were calculated based on the tissue differentiation theory. The results show that L-G scaffold has a better mechanical property than the N-G scaffold. However, N-G scaffold is better than the L-G scaffold in biological properties such as permeability and cartilage differentiation areas. The modeling processes of L-G and N-G scaffolds provide a new insight for the design of bone scaffold. The simulation in this study can also give reference for the prediction of osseointegration after the implantation of scaffold in the human body.