An immersed-boundary method for flow-structure interaction in biological systems with application to phonation

  • Authors:

  • Haoxiang Luo;Rajat Mittal;Xudong Zheng;Steven A. Bielamowicz;Raymond J. Walsh;James K. Hahn

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University 2301 Vanderbilt Pl., Nashville, TN 37235-1592, United States;Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, United States;Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, United States;Division of Otolaryngology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, United States;Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, United States;Department of Computer Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, United States

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computational Physics
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

A new numerical approach for modeling a class of flow-structure interaction problems typically encountered in biological systems is presented. In this approach, a previously developed, sharp-interface, immersed-boundary method for incompressible flows is used to model the fluid flow and a new, sharp-interface Cartesian grid, immersed-boundary method is devised to solve the equations of linear viscoelasticity that governs the solid. The two solvers are coupled to model flow-structure interaction. This coupled solver has the advantage of simple grid generation and efficient computation on simple, single-block structured grids. The accuracy of the solid-mechanics solver is examined by applying it to a canonical problem. The solution methodology is then applied to the problem of laryngeal aerodynamics and vocal fold vibration during human phonation. This includes a three-dimensional eigen analysis for a multi-layered vocal fold prototype as well as two-dimensional, flow-induced vocal fold vibration in a modeled larynx. Several salient features of the aerodynamics as well as vocal fold dynamics are presented.