Joint pain in the form of arthritis is cited as the leading cause of disability among adults. Arthritis is caused by the damage or degeneration of articular cartilage in joints such as the knee and hip. A promising treatment for this disease may include the tissue engineering of new cartilage implants in vitro (outside the body) to replace the damaged or degraded tissue in vivo (inside the body). These procedures have been attempted but have achieved very little success. Researchers believe that in order for successful implantation to occur, the engineered implants must exhibit nearly identical structural and mechanical properties to the surrounding native tissue. To help researchers understand how cartilage tissue may grow and remodel during in vitro growth experiments, a cartilage finite element growth model (CFEGM) was developed to simulate tissue adaptation in response to biomechanical factors. The CFEGM couples finite element analysis with a growth algorithm to simulate time-based tissue growth experiments by solving the equilibrium incremental growth boundary value problem. Tissue growth is defined by growth laws, which are currently unknown. The assumed growth laws define both stimulated and unstimulated growth. Stimulated growth is related to mechanical factors such as the specimen’s diffusive fluid velocity, and unstimulated growth is independent from these factors. Growth case studies using the CFEGM on initially homogeneous specimens were able simulate both stimulated and unstimulated constituent growth over a period of 14-days when subjected to confined compression loading. Stimulated growth was triggered by diffusive fluid velocities that exceeded 2.5 μm/s, and unstimulated growth occurred at a constant rate of 1% per day. The qualitative results from these case studies suggest that the CFEGM can simulate nonhomogeneous tissue development during growth experiments. Actual growth data to determine growth laws and cartilage material properties are still needed to verify and calibrate the model. Ifthe CFEGM can successfully predict cartilage tissue growth and adaptation for in vitro growth experiments, it can be used as tool to perform virtual growth parameter studies and evaluate the worthiness of experimental protocols before the more costly and time intensive tissue engineering experiments are conducted.