Numerical accuracy comparison of two boundary conditions commonly used to approximate shear stress distributions in tissue engineering scaffolds cultured under flow perfusion.

It was found that despite the RVEs being sufficiently larger than 6 times the scaffold pore size (which is the only accuracy guideline found in literature), the stresses were still significantly under-predicted by both types of boundary conditions: between 20% and 80% average error, depending on the scaffold's porosity. Moreover, it was found that the error grew with higher porosity. This is likely due to the small pores dominating the flow field, and thereby negating the effects of the unrealistic boundary conditions, when the scaffold porosity is small. Finally, it was found that the PBC was always more accurate and computationally efficient than the WBC. Therefore, it is the recommended type of RVE.