Vibrations of Nonlinear Elastic Structure Excited by Compressible Flow

This study deals with the development of an accurate, efficient and robust method for the numerical solution of the interaction of compressible flow and nonlinear dynamic elasticity. This problem requires the reliable solution of flow in time-dependent domains and the solution of deformations of elastic bodies formed by several materials with complicated geometry depending on time. In this paper, the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problem is solved numerically by the space-time discontinuous Galerkin method (STDGM). In the case of compressible flow, we use the compressible Navier-Stokes equations formulated by the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method. The elasticity problem uses the non-stationary formulation of the dynamic system using the St. Venant-Kirchhoff and neo-Hookean models. The STDGM for the nonlinear elasticity is tested on the Hron-Turek benchmark. The main novelty of the study is the numerical simulation of the nonlinear vocal fold vibrations excited by the compressible airflow coming from the trachea to the simplified model of the vocal tract. The computations show that the nonlinear elasticity model of the vocal folds is needed in order to obtain substantially higher accuracy of the computed vocal folds deformation than for the linear elasticity model. Moreover, the numerical simulations showed that the differences between the two considered nonlinear material models are very small.

Automated summary

This study presents a numerical method for solving the interaction of compressible flow and nonlinear dynamic elasticity, relying on the reliable solution of time-dependent flow and deformations of elastic bodies. The method successfully simulates vocal fold vibrations excited by compressible airflow, showing the necessity of nonlinear elasticity modeling for higher accuracy of results. Results suggest minimal differences between considered nonlinear material models.