Importance of the numerical schemes in the CFD of the human nose

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Hauptverfasser: Schillaci, Andrea, Quadrio, Maurizio
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Schillaci, Andrea
Quadrio, Maurizio
author_facet Schillaci, Andrea
Quadrio, Maurizio
contents Computational fluid dynamics of the air flow in the human nasal cavities, starting from patient-specific Computer Tomography (CT) scans, is an important tool for diagnostics and surgery planning. However, a complete and systematic assessment of the influence of the main modeling assumptions is still lacking. In designing such simulations, choosing the discretization scheme, which is the main subject of the present work, is an often overlooked decision of primary importance. We use a comparison framework to quantify the effects of the major design choices on the results. The reconstructed airways of a healthy, representative adult patient are used to set up a computational study where such effects are systematically measured. It is found that the choice of the numerical scheme is the most important aspect, although all varied parameters impact the solution noticeably. For a physiologically meaningful flow rate, changes of the global pressure drop up to more than 50\% are observed; locally, velocity differences can become extremely significant. Our results call for an improved standard in the description of this type of numerical studies, where way too often the order of accuracy of the numerical scheme is not mentioned.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_23163
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Importance of the numerical schemes in the CFD of the human nose
Schillaci, Andrea
Quadrio, Maurizio
Fluid Dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics of the air flow in the human nasal cavities, starting from patient-specific Computer Tomography (CT) scans, is an important tool for diagnostics and surgery planning. However, a complete and systematic assessment of the influence of the main modeling assumptions is still lacking. In designing such simulations, choosing the discretization scheme, which is the main subject of the present work, is an often overlooked decision of primary importance. We use a comparison framework to quantify the effects of the major design choices on the results. The reconstructed airways of a healthy, representative adult patient are used to set up a computational study where such effects are systematically measured. It is found that the choice of the numerical scheme is the most important aspect, although all varied parameters impact the solution noticeably. For a physiologically meaningful flow rate, changes of the global pressure drop up to more than 50\% are observed; locally, velocity differences can become extremely significant. Our results call for an improved standard in the description of this type of numerical studies, where way too often the order of accuracy of the numerical scheme is not mentioned.
title Importance of the numerical schemes in the CFD of the human nose
topic Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23163