Computational fluid dynamics in the upper airway: comparison between different models and experimental data for a simplified geometry with major obstruction

Abstract

The present study aims at comparing different computational models used for simulating the fluid-structure interaction within an in-vitro setup resembling simplified major obstruction of pharyngeal airway. Due to the nature of the problem, i.e. air flow passing over a deformable latex surface, a fully coupled fluid-structure interaction algorithm is used. A comparison is made between two finite element models for the solid domain, one using shell and the other using volume elements. The material properties of these models follow a hyperelastic behavior. For the fluid part, laminar and various turbulence models such as standard k-epsilon, Shear Stress Transport, SSG Reynolds Stress and BSL Reynolds Stress are compared. We evaluate the efficiency of the models and how close to the experimental data are their results. The predictions of the structural model containing volume elements showed better consistency with the experimental data. In addition, the results obtained with the standard k-epsilon turbulence model were the least deviated among all turbulence models