Codice 52/2015 Titolo Growing Avascular Tumours as Elasto-Plastic Bodies by the Theory of Evolving Natural Configurations Data 2015-09-30 Autore/i Giverso, C.; Scianna, M.; Grillo, A. Link Download full text Pubblicato Mechanics Research Communications, 68:31-39 Abstract The aim of this article is to propose a simple way of describing a tumour as a linear elastic material from a reference configuration that is continuously evolving in time due to growth and remodelling. The main assumption allowing this simplification is that the tumour mass is a very ductile material, so that it can only sustain moderate stresses while the deformation induced by growth, that can actually be quite big, mainly induces a plastic reorganisation of malignant cells. In mathematical terms this means that the deformation gradient can be split into a volumetric growth term, a term describing the reorganisation of cells, and a term that can be approximated by means of the linear strain tensor. A dimensionless analysis of the importance of the different terms also allows to introduce a second simplification consisting in the decoupling of the equations describing the growth of the tumour mass from those describing the flow of the interstitial fluid.