The role of porosity and solid matrix compressibility on the mechanical behavior of poroelastic tissues

We investigate the dependence of the mechanical and hydraulic properties of poroelastic materials on the interstitial volume fraction (porosity) of the fluid flowing through their pores and compressibility of their elastic (matrix) phase. The mechanical behavior of the matrix is assumed of linear elastic type and we conduct a three-dimensional microstructural analysis by means of the asymptotic homogenization technique exploiting the length scale separation between the pores (pore-scale or microscale) and the average tissue size (the macroscale). The coefficients of the model are therefore obtained by suitable averages which involve the solutions of periodic cell problems at the pore-scale. The latter are solved numerically by finite elements in a cubic cell by assuming a cross-shaped interconnected cylindrical structure which results in a cubic symmetric stiffness tensor on the macroscale. Therefore, the macroscale response of the material is fully characterized by six parameters, namely the elastic Young's and shear moduli, Poisson's ratio, the hydraulic conductivity, and the poroelastic parameters, i.e. Biot's modulus and Biot's coefficient. We present our findings in terms of a parametric analysis conducted by varying the porosity as well as the Poisson's ratio of the matrix. Our novel three-dimensional results, which are presented in the context of tumor modeling, serve as a robust first step to (a) quantify the macroscale response of poroelastic materials on the basis of their underlying microstructure, (b) relate the compressibility of the tissue, which can be used to distinguish between benign tumor and cancer, to its microstructural properties (such as porosity), and (c) reveal a nontrivial dependency of Biot's modulus on porosity and compressibility of the matrix, which can pave the way to the optimal design of artificial constructs in terms of fluid volume available for transport of mass and solutes.