Dynamic study of the middle ear

The human ear is a complex biomechanical system and is divided by three parts: outer, middle and inner ear.

When a sound is made outside the outer ear, the sound waves travel down the external auditory canal and strike the eardrum. It vibrates and the vibrations pass through three tiny bones in the middle ear called the ossicles (malleus, incus and stapes). The ossicles amplify the sound and send the sound waves to the inner ear and into the fluid filled hearing organ (cochlea), by the oval window.

However, the ossicles can suffer from several damages, for example, the Otosclerosis, being a need the application of mechanical prosthesis, by chirurgic intervention, keeping the right travel of sound wave. In order to study the implementation of prosthesis, it is very important to achieve a correct modelling of the vibro-acoustic behaviour of middle ear.

In this work, a finite element modelling of the middle ear will be done. For this proposes, a dynamic study will be presented by using the ABAQUS program. The model will include the different ligaments of the support structure. A hyperelastic behaviour of this ligaments will be taken into account [

1

] and for the ossicles and eardrum the mechanical properties available in the literature [

2

] will be considered. The connection between ossicles will be done by using contact formulation. The eigenvalues and the eigenvectors will be carried out.