Fig. 5.

Simulated displacement field relative to tissue deformation during swallowing. For Figs. 5–9, the deformed mesh (black lines) is superimposed on the original mesh (gray lines in background) for perspective to the initial configuration of the tongue. Elemental displacement is defined as a vector of the difference between current position of a material position (at time t) and the position of the same point in initial configuration (at t = 0). The color code represents magnitude of the displacement vector in millimeters. Shown is prototypical lingual deformation during swallowing, initiating with lingual tip contact with the hard palate and extending through the accommodative and propulsive phases. These results demonstrate the significance of the upward deformation of the lingual tip and anterior-posterior shortening, followed by inferior displacement (principally related to hyoglossus contraction) and clockwise rotation (principally related to superior-inferior sequential contractions of the genioglossus regions).