Numerical Analysis of Nasal Flow Characteristics with Microparticles.

Abstract

This study was to investigate the airflow characteristics in nasal cavity under different conditions and analyze the effects of different respiratory intensity, particle diameter, and particle density on the deposition of particles carried by airflow in the nasal cavity, respectively. The three-dimensional geometric model of the nasal cavity was established based on typical medical images. The SST k-ω turbulence model in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to simulate the airflow in the nasal cavity, and the deposition of particles in the airflow was analyzed with the Lagrange discrete phase model. The results showed that the air in the nasal cavity flows in the left and right nasal passages through the perforation in front of the nasal septum and forms a vortex structure at the perforation site, and the particle deposition efficiencies (DE) under perforation nasal cavity are higher than that under normal nasal cavity. Different parameters had different effects on the particle DE. The results showed that the DE of particles with smaller size (≤2.5 μm) is lower; the higher the respiration intensity, the greater the influence on the DE of the larger particle size; and the larger particle density (>1550 kg·m−3) has little effect on the DE of larger particle size (DP = 10 μm). The results agree well with the corresponding research data.