ABSTRACT
From a biological perspective, surface growth refers to mechanisms tied to accretion and deposition occurring mostly in hard biological tissues (in contrast, it is acknowledged that soft tissues develop by volumetric growth), and is active in the formation of teeth, seashells, horns, nails, or bones (Thompson, 1992). A landmark in this field is (Skalak et al., 1982, 1997), who describe the growth or atrophy of part of a biological body by the accretion or resorption of biological tissue lying on the surface of the body. Models for the kinematics of surface growth have been developed in Skalak et al. (1997), with a clear distinction between cases of fixed (e.g. nails and horns) and moving growth surfaces (seashells, antlers), see also (Garikipati, 2009) and Ganghoffer (2010a, 2010b) for a recent exhaustive literature review.
