HYDRO-ELASTIC FINITE ELEMENT MODEL OF A VOCAL FOLD REPLICA

Experimental vocal fold replicas are currently used in speech production studies in order to validate simplified models on controllable devices. In addition to in-situ mechanical characterization, it is important to be able to understand their behavior when changing assembly properties or using parameters control to tune the folds, by developing a model able to predict their static and dynamic motions. This also enables to describe more complex vibration behaviors which could be harder to observe experimentally. This paper first presents a hydro-elastic finite element model of a single vocal fold. Numerical results are discussed, along with a parametric analysis. Then this model is extended to take into account the effect of the water pressure on the inflation of the folds and on the resonance frequencies. A hyper-elastic calculation is first used to simulate the latex inflation. An updated Lagrangian approach processes it as a pre-stress term in a modal analysis calculation for the small amplitude vibrations of the hydro-elastic structure, which allows to model the water pressure influence on the mechanical resonances of the simulated replica.