Three different pre-courses will be offered covering multi-scale problems in biomechanics from the experimental and numerical side from the nano- up to the macro-scale. The pre-courses are addressed to graduate students, post-docs, and young researchers. Topics are experimental tissue micro- and nanomechanics, multiscale simulation of biological tissues, and whole organ bone biomechanics. They cover topics where the organizing groups have significantly contributed to the current international state-of-the-art. Well-established methods and current research results will be presented.
The pre-course on Experimental Tissue Micro- and Nanomechanics will deal with state-of-the-art methods for the mechanical characterization of tissue structural elements from the nano- to the micro- and the mm-scale. Measurement principles of atomic force microscopy, nanoindentation, micromechanical testing, as well as methods for structural and chemical characterization will be discussed. The pre-course will also include a hands-on tour to the Interfacultary Laboratory for Micro- and Nanomechanics of Biological and Biomimetical Materials, with several showcases of the aforementioned mechanical characterization techniques.
The pre-course on Multiscale Modelling of Tissue Biomechanics and Mechanobiology will deal with the fundamentals of poro-micromechanics and homogenization theory, multiscale models for bone, tendon, and tissue engineering scaffolds, various model validation strategies, and theories coupling engineering mechanics and systems biology.
The pre-course on Whole Organ Bone Biomechanics will cover topics to obtain simulation results from medical images. In this way, fundamentals of medical image processing, CT image-based meshing and material mapping, load evaluation methods, relevant basics of finite element methods, state-of-the-art failure theories of whole organ bone models, and typical published results for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases based on such models will be shown.
