Numerical investigation of an upper airway in a patient suffering from stridor

Abstract

In this master thesis, the numerical investigation of an upper airway in a patient suffering from stridor is investigated using a fluid-structure-acoustic interaction simulation in OpenFOAMR . The geometry of an upper airway model is very difficult, leading to various cross sections and a large spectrum of ow phenomena. Many ow forms were discovered during the analysis, such as ow separation, ow attachment, laminar ow, transitional ow and turbulent ow. Next, there is a large difference in geometry per patient, especially with respect to the age. Neonates and adults have different upper airway's, making a comparison very difficult. Also, taking into account the various possible causes of stridor, detection methods are scarce and mostly unsuccessful. There are too many variables and there is too much variation in a detection model in order to accurately predict the noise. This thesis is an attempt to create one numerical detection method, allowing to change one variable each time a simulation is run.