Abstract
In this paper, the authors present airflow field characteristics of human upper airway and soft palate movement attitude during breathing. On the basis of the data taken from the spiral computerized tomography images of a healthy person and a patient with Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome (OSAHS), three-dimensional models of upper airway cavity and soft palate are reconstructed by the method of surface rendering. Numerical simulation is performed for airflow in the upper airway and displacement of soft palate by fluid-structure interaction analysis. The reconstructed three-dimensional models precisely preserve the original configuration of upper airways and soft palate. The results of the pressure and velocity distributions in the airflow field are quantitatively determined, and the displacement of soft palate is presented. Pressure gradients of airway are lower for the healthy person and the airflow distribution is quite uniform in the case of free breathing. However, the OSAHS patient remarkably escalates both the pressure and velocity in the upper airway, and causes higher displacement of the soft palate. The present study is useful in revealing pathogenesis and quantitative mutual relationship between configuration and function of the upper airway as well as in diagnosing diseases related to anatomical structure and function of the upper airway.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Schwab R.J. and Goldberg A.N. (1998). Upper airway assessment: radiographic and other imaging techniques. Otolaryngol. Clin. North Am. 31: 931–968
Sheng X.L. (2005). Pathophysiology and epidemiology of obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome. J. Pract. Med. 21: 1973–1975
Ayappa I. and Rapoport D.M. (2003). The upper airway in sleep: physiology of the pharynx. Sleep Med. Rev. 7: 9–33
Cao Y. and Chen K.M. (2004). The study of the upper airway in obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome with multi-slice spiral CT. Chin. J. Radiol. 38: 967–970
Kelly J.T., Prasad A.K. and Wexler A.S. (2000). Detailed flow patterns in the nasal cavity. J. Appl. Physiol. 89: 323–337
Hörschler I., Gerndt A. and Reimersdahl Th. (2001). Airflow simulation inside a model of the human nasal cavity in a virtual reality based rhinological operation planning system. Int. Congr. Ser., Berlin, 87–92
Hörschler I., Meinke M. and Schröder W. (2003). Numerical simulation of the flow field in a model of the nasal cavity. Comput. Fluids 32: 39–45
Kim S.K. and Chung S.K. (2004). An investigation on airflow in disordered nasal cavity and its corrected models by tomographic PIV. Meas. Sci. Technol. 15: 1090–1096
Subramaniam R.P., Richardson R.B. and Morgan K.T., (1998). Computational fluid dynamics simulations of inspiratory airflow in the human nose and nasopharynx. Inhal. Toxicol. 10: 91–120
Shome B., Wang L.P. and Santare M.H., (1998). Modeling of airflow in the pharynx with application to sleep apnea. J. Biomech. Eng. 120: 416–422
Allen G.M., Shortall B.P. and Gemci T., (2004). Computational simulations of airflow in an in vitro model of the pediatric upper airways. J. Biomech. Eng. 126: 604–613
Zhang Z. and Kleinstreuer C. (2004). Airflow structures and nano-particle deposition in a human upper airway model. J. Comput. Phys. 198: 178–210
Sun X.Z., Yu C. and Liu Y.X. (2006). 3D Finite element model reconstruction and numerical simulation of airflow in human upper airway. Space Med. Med. Eng. 19: 129–133
Bei J.J., Shan Y.G. and Zhang Y.H., (2003). Soft and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Anat. Clin. 8: 121–122
Payan Y., Pelorson X. and Perrier P. (2003). Physical modeling of airflow–walls interactions to understand the Sleep Apnea syndrome. Springer, Juan-Les-Pins
Huang X.Z. and Wang J.B. (1998). Practical otorhinalaryngology. People’s Medical Publishing House, Beijing
Cheng X.S. (2004). Thorax auscultation is not to be neglected. Chin. J. Intern. Med. 43: 786–789
Yang G.T., Che W.Y. and Xu J.B. (1999). Biomechanics. Chongqing Press, Chongqing
Xiaosa workroom (2004). The newest classical ANSYS and Workbench. Publishing House of Electronics Industry, Beijing
Auregan Y. and Depollier C. (1995). Snoring: Linear stability analysis in-vitro experiments. J. Sound Vib. 188: 39–54
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10672036, 10472025 and 10421002), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (20032109).
English text was polished by Yunming Chen.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sun, X., Yu, C., Wang, Y. et al. Numerical simulation of soft palate movement and airflow in human upper airway by fluid-structure interaction method. Acta Mech Sin 23, 359–367 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-007-0083-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-007-0083-4