Modeling the elastic anisotropy of woven hierarchical tissues

In this paper, the elastic properties of a 2-D woven hierarchical tissue are modeled, assuming the warp and fill yarns at level 0 as an orthotropic material. Tissues at level (n − 1) are considered as warp and fill yarns at level n; correspondingly, considering matrix transformation and stiffness averaging, stiffness matrices of the tissues at level (n − 1) are employed to calculate those of the tissues at level n. We compare the theory with experiments on tendons from the literature and on leaves performed by ourselves. The results show the possibility of designing a new class of hierarchical 2-D scaffolds with desired elastic anisotropy, better matching that of biological tissues and thus maximizing the tissue regeneration at each hierarchical level.