Figure 7.

Despite exhibiting a tissue-like mechanical response at the macroscale, the scaffold exhibits vastly different micro and meso mechanical behaviors. For instance, at the microscale, a heterogeneous deformation response is observed. In addition, fibers in the unstrained configuration exhibit an undulated or tortuous morphology which transitions into a highly interconnected web-like architecture at finite strains. At the macroscale, we observe a complex 3D scaffold with tunable tissue-level mechanical behavior that can be remarkably similar to the biaxial mechanical response of the native PV leaflet (biaxial result reproduced from Courtney et al.¹³ with permission from Elsevier). [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]