Kim Namkeun, Chang You, Stenfelt Stefan
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, 58185 Linköping, Sweden.
Biomed Res Int. 2014;2014:519429. doi: 10.1155/2014/519429. Epub 2014 Aug 27.
A three-dimensional finite-element (FE) model of a human dry skull was devised for simulation of human bone-conduction (BC) hearing. Although a dry skull is a simplification of the real complex human skull, such model is valuable for understanding basic BC hearing processes. For validation of the model, the mechanical point impedance of the skull as well as the acceleration of the ipsilateral and contralateral cochlear bone was computed and compared to experimental results. Simulation results showed reasonable consistency between the mechanical point impedance and the experimental measurements when Young's modulus for skull and polyurethane was set to be 7.3 GPa and 1 MPa with 0.01 and 0.1 loss factors at 1 kHz, respectively. Moreover, the acceleration in the medial-lateral direction showed the best correspondence with the published experimental data, whereas the acceleration in the inferior-superior direction showed the largest discrepancy. However, the results were reasonable considering that different geometries were used for the 3D FE skull and the skull used in the published experimental study. The dry skull model is a first step for understanding BC hearing mechanism in a human head and simulation results can be used to predict vibration pattern of the bone surrounding the middle and inner ear during BC stimulation.
设计了一个人类干燥颅骨的三维有限元（FE）模型，用于模拟人类骨传导（BC）听力。尽管干燥颅骨是对真实复杂人类颅骨的简化，但这种模型对于理解基本的骨传导听力过程具有重要价值。为了验证该模型，计算了颅骨的机械点阻抗以及同侧和对侧耳蜗骨的加速度，并与实验结果进行了比较。当颅骨和聚氨酯的杨氏模量分别设置为7.3 GPa和1 MPa，在1 kHz时损耗因子分别为0.01和0.1时，模拟结果表明机械点阻抗与实验测量值之间具有合理的一致性。此外，内外侧方向的加速度与已发表的实验数据显示出最佳的对应关系，而上下方向的加速度差异最大。然而，考虑到三维有限元颅骨和已发表实验研究中使用的颅骨采用了不同的几何形状，结果是合理的。干燥颅骨模型是理解人类头部骨传导听力机制的第一步，模拟结果可用于预测骨传导刺激期间中耳和内耳周围骨骼的振动模式。
