THREE-DIMENSIONAL NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF CZECH VOWEL PRODUCTION

: Spatial air pressures generated in human vocal tract by vibrating vocal folds present sound sources of vowel production. This paper simulates phonation phenomena by using fluid-structure-acoustic scheme in a three-dimensional (3D) finite element model of a Czech vowel [o:]. The computational model was composed of four-layered M5-shaped vocal folds together with an idealized trachea and vocal tract. Spatial fluid flow in the trachea and in the vocal tract was obtained by unsteady viscous compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The oscillating vocal folds were modelled by a momentum equation. Large deformations were allowed. Transient analysis was performed based on separate structure and fluid solvers, which were exchanging loads acting on the vocal folds boundaries in each time iteration. The deformation of the fluid mesh during the vocal fold oscillation was realized by the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian approach and by interpolation of fluid results on the deformed fluid mesh. Preliminary results show vibration characteristics of the vocal folds, which correspond to those obtained from human phonation at higher pitch. The vocal folds were self-oscillating at a reasonable frequency of 180 Hz. The vocal tract eigenfrequencies were in the ranges of the formant frequencies of Czech vowel [o:] measured on humans; during self-oscillations the formants shifted to lower frequencies.