Virtual lab experiments

[David Jamison]

Hello all,

Is anyone aware of sources out there for virtual laboratory experiments related to biomechanics for course instruction? Potential topics I'm looking for include: bone tissue mechanics, biorheology, cellular mechanics, etc.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Edward Morra]

Re: Virtual lab experiments

While computational models have been developed for all three subject matters you mention, they were generally PHD dissertation level work, using rather advanced methods and rely generally on proprietary and expensive commercial finite element software to be created and solved. I am not sure if the level of involvement would be practical for a single course.

Of course, you could challenge students to come up with simpler models using spreadsheets or statistical approaches that are predictive of experimental data, which in itself, would be very educational.

You will find many open source computational biomechanics models are available at simtk.org that may suit your need.

- Ed -