Voxel-based Simulation of Nasal Airflow during a Sniff

Abstract

To establish a new simplified approach to quantify the impact of surgical intervention on nasal airflow, we used voxel-based computational fluid dynamics simulations to analyze nasal airflow under unsteady flow conditions mimicking a sniff, which involves brief inhalation accompanied by rapid acceleration. The time-transient distribution of the flow rate in the coronal cross-section was investigated to validate the results of this voxel method against those of conventional boundary-fitted method. Despite a simple approach using coarse voxel grids, the voxel method accurately reproduced rapid changes in flow distribution during a sniff. We also found that correctly modeling rapid changes in the characteristic flow structure in a nasal cavity (including a jet posterior to the nasal valve and a recirculating flow in the upper anterior region of the cavity) is important for reproducing the unsteady flow distribution during a sniff. Thus, the voxel-based simulations can be used to assess the dynamics of unsteady nasal airflows.