The present work seeks to elucidate the flow-structure dynamics of the upper airway so that improved clinical strategies for the alleviation of snoring and sleep apnoea can be developed and applied on an evidence basis. Analogue computational modelling, appropriately related to the anatomically correct system, is used. Hitherto, such modelling has been confined to flow in a rigidchannel to study flutter of the soft palate. Clinical evidence suggests that apneic events can involve combined motions and interactions of the soft palate and flexible walls of the pharynx. We model a flexible cantilevered plate (the soft-palate) mounted in a channel of square cross-section (the pharynx), the downstream side walls of which are flexible to capture deformation in airway collapse. Upstream of the flexible plate is a rigid plate (the hard palate) that spans the channel to permit airflow to be drawn from two inlets (oral and nasal). The commercial FSI software ADINA is used to construct the model and undertake the three-dimensional investigation. Results show that motions of the soft-palate have little effect on the deformation of the side walls. However, the amplitude and frequency of soft-palate vibrations are found to be strongly dependent upon side-wall stiffness and, hence, dynamics.
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