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Bioreactors are crucial tools for the manufacturing of living cell‐based tissue engineered products. However, to reach the market successfully, higher degrees of automation, as well as a decreased footprint still need to be reached. In this study, the use of a benchtop bioreactor for in vitro perfusion culture of scaffold‐based tissue engineering constructs is assessed. A low‐footprint benchtop bioreactor system is designed, comprising a single‐use fluidic components and a bioreactor housing. The bioreactor is operated using an in‐house developed program and the culture environment is monitored by specifically designed sensor ports. A gas‐exchange module is incorporated allowing for heat and mass transfers. Titanium‐based scaffolds are seeded with human periosteum‐derived cells and cultured up to 3 weeks. The benchtop bioreactor constructs are compared to benchmark perfusion systems. Live/Dead stainings, DNA quantifications, glucose consumption, and lactate production assays confirm that the constructs cultured in the benchtop bioreactor grew similarly to the benchmark systems. Manual regulation of the system set points enabled efficient alteration of the culture environment in terms of temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen. This study provides the necessary basis for the development of low‐footprint, automated, benchtop perfusion bioreactors and enables the implementation of active environment control.

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In-situ testing capabilities of lab-scale industrial computed tomography are rapidly improving. In the present study, the compressive deformation behaviour of a flax fibre-reinforced epoxy composite is studied in an in-situ compression test with stepwise loading, during 3D imaging with X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT). The 3D volumes are processed with Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) to identify the deformation of each loading step. The natural variability of the flax texture served as an adequate speckle pattern for DVC. The precision and accuracy of the DVC were investigated prior to the analysis of the deformation volumes by digitally deforming the reference undeformed volume with a known strain of 2 %. The calculated global strain was in good agreement with the digitally applied strain. Subsequently, DVC was applied to the acquired reference and deformed volumes and the analysis was focused on the 3D strain field evolution between the consecutive loading steps. Strain localization regions were observed in the axial strain εzz and the in-plane strain εxx. In the subsequent loading steps, the onset of compressive fibre-kinking is observed as a rotating fibre inside the magnified strain region. The 3D strain field evolution allows for a better understanding of the deformation and failure mechanisms at the meso/micro-scale in natural fibre reinforced composites under compressive loads.