Physical discomfort of earplug is a common complaint, so much so it jeopardizes the health and safety of workers, resulting in frequent noncompliance to proper wearing of earplugs. A pressing need thus arises to understand the underlying mechanics for the interaction of earplugs with earcanal walls. An idealized cylindrical geometry of earcanal is first treated with computational and analytical modeling to predict the pressure induced by roll-down cylindrical PVC foam earplugs. In order to predict representative pressure values and distribution, we estimated the hyperelastic properties of foam-based earplugs and characterized their behavior using a stent testing machine (J-Crimp^TM machine) that mimics the radial compression of earplugs inside earcanals. Similarly, we estimated the hyperelastic properties of skin based on a simplified model consisting of a single hyperelastic layer. As a crosscheck of those found properties and the calibrated models, we validated them with literature and against a set of three experiments: (i) earplug expansion in a cylindrical holder, (ii) quasi-static uniaxial and (iii) transverse compression. We finally used those validated properties of the foam and skin to compute the pressure magnitude and distribution in an axisymmetric representation of earcanal as well as in a 3D realistic earcanal reconstructed from MRI images of a human subject.

耳塞的身体不适是常见的投诉，以至于危害工人的健康和安全，导致经常出现不遵守正确佩戴耳塞的规定。因此，迫切需要了解耳塞与耳道壁相互作用的基本机制。首先使用计算和分析模型处理理想化的耳道圆柱几何形状，以预测滚落圆柱形 PVC 泡沫耳塞引起的压力。为了预测代表性压力值和分布，我们评估了泡沫耳塞的超弹性特性，并使用支架测试机 (J-Crimp ^{TM ) 表征了它们的行为}机器）模拟耳塞在耳道内的径向压缩。同样，我们基于由单个超弹性层组成的简化模型来估计皮肤的超弹性特性。作为对这些发现的特性和校准模型的交叉检查，我们通过文献和一组三个实验验证了它们：（i）圆柱形支架中的耳塞膨胀，（ii）准静态单轴和（iii）横向压缩。我们最终使用泡沫和皮肤的那些经过验证的特性来计算耳道轴对称表示以及从人类受试者的 MRI 图像重建的 3D 逼真耳道中的压力大小和分布。