Adaptive Finite Element Methods for Fluid Structure Interaction Problems with Applications to Human Phonation

Abstract: This work presents a unified framework for numerical solution of Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) and acoustics problems with focus on human phonation. The Finite Element Method is employed for numerical investigation of partial differential equations that model conservation of momentum and mass. Since the resulting system of equations is very large, an efficient open source high performance implementation is constructed and provided. In order to gain accuracy for the numerical solutions, an adaptive mesh refinement strategy is employed which reduces the computational cost in comparison to a uniform refinement. Adaptive refinement of the mesh relies on computable error indicators which appear as a combination of a computable residual and the solution of a so-called dual problem acting as weights on computed residuals. The first main achievement of this thesis is to apply this strategy to numerical simulations of a benchmark problem for FSI. This FSI model is further extended for contact handling and applied to a realistic vocal folds geometry where the glottic wave formation was captured in the numerical simulations. This is the second achievement in the presented work. The FSI model is further coupled to an acoustics model through an acoustic analogy, for vocal folds with flow induced oscillations for a domain constructed to create the vowel /i/. The comparisons of the obtained pressure signal at specified points with respect to results from literature for the same vowel is reported, which is the final main result presented.