Main Purposes

MorphoMechanX is a user-friendly, GPU-accelerated and interactive software to perform Finite Element Method (FEM) based simulations for continuum mechanics in the context of bio-mechanics and developmental biology. The concept is based on modeling the cell wall as a continuum material of user-specified material properties and, if cellular resolution is adopted, including the effect of turgor pressure on it and, by minimization of the strain energy + external forces contribution functional, finding the equilibrium configuration. External forces can be added so to simulate extensions or indentation, or also prescribed deformations (see for example Mosca et al., 2017, Hofhuis et al., 2016, Trozzi et al., 2021).
When it comes to growth, we follow the concept of deformation gradient decomposition illustrated inGoriely and Ben Amar, 2007 by actively growing the reference configuration and elastically resolving the emerging tissue conflicts giving rise to residual stresses (Rodriguez et al. 1994). Growth can be at a continuous or even at cellular discretization and growth fields can be assigned interactively by the user which can easily graphically specify diffusing and interacting morphogenetic fields , or be the output of mathematical relation (as GRNs). Examples can be found in the Gallery and in the Publications sections.
For more details about how to set up your models, refer to the User Manual (which is currently still under development and expansion) and to the Theory Manual (coming soon..) for details about the mathematical formulation of the software.