Influence of vocal tract geometry simplifications on the numerical simulation of vowel sounds

For many years, the vocal tract shape has been approximated by one-dimensional (1D) area functions to study the production of voice. More recently, 3D approaches allow one to deal with the complex 3D vocal tract, although area-based 3D geometries of circular cross-section are still in use. However,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arnela, Marc, Dabbaghchian, Saeed, Bladin, Rémi, Guasch, Oriol, Engwall, Olov, Van Hirtum, Annemie, Pelorson, Xavier
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universitat Ramon Llull (URL)
Repositorio:DAU Arxiu Digital de la Universitat Ramon Llull
OAI Identifier:oai:dau.url.edu:20.500.14342/5729
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14342/5729
https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4962488
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Vocal tract acoustics
Human voice
Acoustical properties
Acoustic field
Vowel systems
Wave propagation
Computer simulation
Finite-element analysis
Partial differential equations
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Descripción
Sumario:For many years, the vocal tract shape has been approximated by one-dimensional (1D) area functions to study the production of voice. More recently, 3D approaches allow one to deal with the complex 3D vocal tract, although area-based 3D geometries of circular cross-section are still in use. However, little is known about the influence of performing such a simplification, and some alternatives may exist between these two extreme options. To this aim, several vocal tract geometry simplifications for vowels [ɑ], [i], and [u] are investigated in this work. Six cases are considered, consisting of realistic, elliptical, and circular cross-sections interpolated through a bent or straight midline. For frequencies below 4–5 kHz, the influence of bending and cross-sectional shape has been found weak, while above these values simplified bent vocal tracts with realistic cross-sections are necessary to correctly emulate higher-order mode propagation. To perform this study, the finite element method (FEM) has been used. FEM results have also been compared to a 3D multimodal method and to a classical 1D frequency domain model.