Effective-Spring Model of Tympanic Response in Archosaurs

Abstract

Whereas for smaller animals the eardrums are well-characterized as excitable membranes or drums, some animals such as several archosaurs feature, as a first approximation, a rather stiff elastic shell supported by an elastic ring. Mathematically, the theory of plates and shells is applicable but its governing equations overly complicate the modeling. Here the notion of tympanic structure is introduced as a generalization of “ordinary” tympanic membranes so as to account for sound perception as it occurs in archosaurs, such as birds and crocodilians. A mathematical model for the tympanic structure in many archosaurs called two-spring model implements this notion. The model is exactly soluble and solutions are presented in closed form and as a series expansion. Special emphasis is put onto offering an easy-to-apply model for describing experiments and performing numerical studies. The analytic treatment is supplemented by a discussion of the applicability of the two-spring model in auditory research. An elasticity-theoretic perspective of the two-spring model is given in the Appendix.