An innovative agent-based cellular automata framework for simulating articular cartilage biomechanics

Mammalian tissues and organs are complex in structure and function and can degenerate because of diseases. It is not possible to study in full their characteristics with traditional laboratory methods making it difficult to extend our knowledge of tissue function in vivo. This thesis presents a novel computational cellular automata agent and new rules of interaction that can simulate behaviours within and outside such biological components in computational simulations. The new computational methodology was applied to articular cartilage to simulate its complex porous single-phase osmosis-governed structure and characteristics. The results demonstrate that this new computational agent can be used to study other single-phase multi-component materials.