Broadband sound generation by confined pulsating jets in a mechanical model of the human larynx

Experiments were performed to study the production of broadband sound in confined pulsating jets through orifices with a time-varying area. The goal was to better understand broadband sound generation at the human glottis during voicing. The broadband component was extracted from measured sound signals by the elimination of the periodic component through ensemble averaging. Comparisons were made between the probability density functions of the broadband sound in pulsating jets and of comparable stationary jets. The results indicate that the quasi-steady approximation may be valid for the broadband component when the turbulence is well established and the turbulence kinetic energy is comparatively large. A wavelet analysis of the broadband sound showed that random sound production was modulated at the driving frequency. Two distinct sound production peaks were observed during one cycle, presumably associated firstly with jet formation and secondly with flow deceleration during orifice closing. Most high-frequency sound was produced during the closing phase. Deviations from quasi-steady behavior were observed. As the driving frequency increased, sound production during the opening phase was reduced, possibly due to the shorter time available for turbulence to develop. These results may be useful for better quality voice synthesis.     

Instantaneous orifice discharge coefficient of a physical, driven model of the human larynx

The quasisteady approximation is often made in the study of phonatory aerodynamics to facilitate the modeling of time-varying air flows through the self-oscillating vocal folds. The unsteady, pulsating flow is approximated by a sequence of steady flows through representative configurations of the vocal folds at rest. Previous studies have discussed the accuracy of this approximation for a range of orifice geometries, and flow conditions. The purpose of the present study was to further evaluate the quasisteady approximation experimentally using an improved procedure, from a direct comparison between the discharge coefficients of steady jets through fixed orifices and unsteady jets through modulated orifices of identical shape, area, and transglottal pressures at a given time. Life-scale convergent and divergent glottis-shaped rubber orifices were used in a rigid-walled tube and a low Mach number flow representative of human phonation. It was found that the quasisteady approximation is valid during 70% of the duty cycle, when the Reynolds number was above 3000, for a frequency of oscillations of 100 Hz. The steady form of Bernoulli's equation along a streamline, and Bernoulli's flow obstruction theory were found to be reasonably accurate for the unsteady flows. These models break down at low Reynolds numbers, near the beginning and the end of the duty cycle, due to viscous effects and to the influence of flow displaced by the motion of the walls.     

Experimental investigation of the influence of a posterior gap on glottal flow and sound

The influence of a posterior gap on the airflow through the human glottis was investigated using a driven synthetic model. Instantaneous orifice discharge coefficient of a glottal shaped orifice was obtained from the time-varying orifice area and the velocity distribution of the pulsated jet measured on the axial plane using a single hot-wire probe. Instantaneous orifice discharge coefficient values were found to undergo a cyclic hysteresis loop when plotted versus Reynolds number and time, indicating a pressure head increase and a net energy transfer from the air flow to the orifice wall. The net energy transferred was estimated to be around 10% of the value presumably required to achieve self-sustained oscillation. The radiated sound pressure was measured to characterize the influence of the minimum flow through the posterior gap on the broadband component of the radiated sound. The presence of a posterior gap was found to significantly increase the broadband sound level produced over the frequency range in which human hearing is most sensitive.     

Sound generation by steady flow through glottis-shaped orifices

Although the signature of human voice is mostly tonal, it also includes a significant broadband component. Quadrupolelike sources due to turbulence in the region downstream of the glottis, and dipolelike sources due to the force applied by the vocal folds onto the surrounding fluid are the two primary broadband sound generating mechanisms. In this study, experiments were conducted to characterize the broadband sound emissions of confined stationary jets through rubber orifices formed to imitate the approximate shape of the human glottis at different stages during one cycle of vocal fold vibrations. The radiated sound pressure spectra downstream of the orifices were measured for varying flow rates, orifice shapes, and gas mixtures. The nondimensional sound pressure spectra were decomposed into the product of three functions: a source function F, a radiation efficiency function M, and an acoustic response function G. The results show that, as for circular jets, the quadrupole source contributions dominated for straight and convergent orifices. For divergent jets, whistling tonal sounds were emitted at low flow rates. At high flow rates for the same geometry, dipole contributions dominated the sound radiated by free jets. However, possible source-load acoustic feedback may have hampered accurate source identification in confined flows.     

圆孔声学非线性效应的数值模拟

本文发展了一种离散涡模型,模拟了在高声强声波作用下圆孔处发生的涡脱落过程。进而计算了圆孔中的声质点速度,并分析了孔中速度的畸变情况、最后给出了圆孔的非线性声阻和声抗的理论值。非线性声抗的理论预测是现有的研究圆孔声学非线性效应的准稳态模型没有满意解决的问题,因而所做的有关尝试是本文工作的特点之一。     

微圆孔非线性声阻抗及声整流现象的实验研究

在高声强下测量了微圆孔处声激发射流的速度和微圆孔的非线性声阻抗。随声压级的增加声激发射流的速度增大,实验中射流速度在 ０－１９ｍ／ｓ范围内变化,这表明出现一种强烈声整流现象;与此同时微圆孔声阻明显增大,而声抗减小,声抗最小值约是其线性值的０．７倍。此外实验结果还验证了一种微园孔声学非线性效应离散涡模型的合理性。     

Broadband sound generation by confined turbulent jets

Sound generation by confined stationary jets is of interest to the study of voice and speech production, among other applications. The generation of sound by low Mach number, confined, stationary circular jets was investigated. Experiments were performed using a quiet flow supply, muffler-terminated rigid uniform tubes, and acrylic orifice plates. A spectral decomposition method based on a linear source-filter model was used to decompose radiated nondimensional sound pressure spectra measured for various gas mixtures and mean flow velocities into the product of (1) a source spectral distribution function; (2) a function accounting for near field effects and radiation efficiency; and (3) an acoustic frequency response function. The acoustic frequency response function agreed, as expected, with the transfer function between the radiated acoustic pressure at one fixed location and the strength of an equivalent velocity source located at the orifice. The radiation efficiency function indicated a radiation efficiency of the order (kD)2 over the planar wave frequency range and (kD)4 at higher frequencies, where k is the wavenumber and D is the tube cross sectional dimension. This is consistent with theoretical predictions for the planar wave radiation efficiency of quadrupole sources in uniform rigid anechoic tubes. The effects of the Reynolds number, Re, on the source spectral distribution function were found to be insignificant over the range 20002.5. The influence of a reflective open tube termination on the source function spectral distribution was found to be insignificant, confirming the absence of a feedback mechanism.     

Influence of acoustic loading on an effective single mass model of the vocal folds

Three-way interactions between sound waves in the subglottal and supraglottal tracts, the vibrations of the vocal folds, and laryngeal flow were investigated. Sound wave propagation was modeled using a wave reflection analog method. An effective single-degree-of-freedom model was designed to model vocal-fold vibrations. The effects of orifice geometry changes on the flow were considered by enforcing a time-varying discharge coefficient within a Bernoulli flow model. The resulting single-degree-of-freedom model allowed for energy transfer from flow to structural vibrations, an essential feature usually incorporated through the use of higher order models. The relative importance of acoustic loading and the time-varying flow resistance for fluid-structure energy transfer was established for various configurations. The results showed that acoustic loading contributed more significantly to the net energy transfer than the time-varying flow resistance, especially for less inertive supraglottal loads. The contribution of supraglottal loading was found to be more significant than that of subglottal loading. Subglottal loading was found to reduce the net energy transfer to the vocal-fold oscillation during phonation, balancing the effects of the supraglottal load.     

New scaling laws for hot and cold jet mixing noise based on a geometric acoustics model

New scaling laws are presented for hot turbulent jet mixing noise outside the cone of silence. These account for mean flow field effects on sound radiation via an analytical high frequency approximate solution to Lilley's equation. Numerical calculations for sound radiation from sources in a cylindrical shear flow are used to test the validity of the approximation. The proposed scaling laws yield an excellent collapse of jet noise measurements over a wide range of conditions. The resulting information has been incorporated into a jet mixing noise prediction scheme which, with appropriate modifications to the analytical high frequency approximation, can be applied both inside and outside the cone of silence. The prediction scheme for angles inside the cone of silence will be described in a subsequent paper.     

Jet forking driven by pipe tone

The present work deals with an experimental investigation of flow of air through a square-edged circular orifice at the downstream end of a circular duct. Self-excited acoustic oscillations at the natural duct modes are observed for certain flow velocities when the orifice is sufficiently thick. For a specific Reynolds number based on the orifice diameter and the mean jet velocity (9150 < Re < 9850), the jet forks into two trains, with the alternating vortices falling into the same branch of the forked train. Whereas this phenomenon has been reported earlier to have occurred when the density ratio of the jet is less than 0.72, the present results show that it is possible for a jet having the same density as the ambient atmosphere. The jet forking is coincident with jump in the acoustic frequency from one natural acoustic mode to another with comparable amplitudes of both the modes.     

On the interaction of sound with steady heat communicating flows

This paper presents a theoretical and numerical investigation of the interaction between sound waves and non-diffusive, quasi-one-dimensional, subsonic flows with only steady heat communication. It is first shown that a steady heat communicating flow can attenuate or generate sound even in the absence of mean flow acceleration. The relative significance of sound generation by the heat addition induced acceleration of density or entropy inhomogeneities and the effect of steady heat communication on the incident acoustic wave is then found. It is shown through scaling arguments that at high frequencies mean flow acceleration effects are negligible and the only significant sound generating mechanism involves steady heat communication. At low frequencies, however, the two mechanisms are more comparable.     

Experimental examination of vortex-sound generation in an organ pipe: A proposal of jet vortex-layer formation model

Aero-dynamical models of sound generation in an organ pipe driven by a thin jet are investigated through an experimental examination of the vortex-sound theory. An important measurement requirement (acoustic cross-flow as an irrotational potential flow reciprocating sinusoidally) from the vortex-sound theory is carefully realized when the pipe is driven with low blowing pressures of about 60 Pa (jet velocities of about 10 m/s). Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is applied to measure the jet velocity and the acoustic cross-flow velocity over the mouth area at the same phase by quickly switching the jet drive and the loudspeaker-horn drive. The vorticity of the jet flow field and the associated acoustic generation term are evaluated from the measurement data. It is recognized that the model of the “jet vortex-layer formation” is more relevant to the sound production than the vortex-shedding model. The acoustic power is dominantly generated by the flow–acoustic interaction near the edge, where the acoustic cross-flow velocity takes larger magnitudes. The acoustic generation formula on the vortex sound cannot deny the conventional acoustical volume-flow model because of the in-phase relation satisfied between the acoustic pressure at the mouth and the acoustic volume flow into the pipe. The vortex layers formed along both sides of the jet act as the source of an accelerating force (through the “acceleration unbalance”) with periodically alternating direction to oscillate the jet flow and to reinforce the acoustic cross-flow at the pipe mouth.     

Vocal tract resonances and the sound of the Australian didjeridu (yidaki) I. experiment

The didjeridu, or yidaki, is a simple tube about 1.5 m long, played with the lips, as in a tuba, but mostly producing just a tonal, rhythmic drone sound. The acoustic impedance spectra of performers' vocal tracts were measured while they played and compared with the radiated sound spectra. When the tongue is close to the hard palate, the vocal tract impedance has several maxima in the range 1-3 kHz. These maxima, if sufficiently large, produce minima in the spectral envelope of the sound because the corresponding frequency components of acoustic current in the flow entering the instrument are small. In the ranges between the impedance maxima, the lower impedance of the tract allows relatively large acoustic current components that correspond to strong formants in the radiated sound. Broad, weak formants can also be observed when groups of even or odd harmonics coincide with bore resonances. Schlieren photographs of the jet entering the instrument and high speed video images of the player's lips show that the lips are closed for about half of each cycle, thus generating high levels of upper harmonics of the lip frequency. Examples of the spectra of "circular breathing" and combined playing and vocalization are shown.     

Acoustic treaming visualization in elastic spherical cavities

Flow visualizations are presented for acoustic streaming occurring inside spherical elastic cavities oscillating in an acoustic field. Streaming flows are visualized using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and results are observed for a range of values of a dimensionless frequency parameter,M=120–306. Over the frequency range investigated, streaming flow fields remain steady at a given value ofM. The magnitude of the flows circulating inside the cavity remains small (<1 mm/s) and follows a non-linear dependency with respect to the acoustic power of the sound wave. The present boundary-driven cavity flows may enhance particle fluid transport mechanisms, leading ultimately to potential fluid mixing applications.     

Suppression effect of jet flow on pulsating pressure of cavity using scale-adaptive simulation model

The suppression of the aerodynamic noise in the cavity has a great significance to solve relevant puzzles of weapon bays.Acoustic field of the standard cavity model is simulated by using the computational fluid dynamics technology based on scale-adaptive simulation(SAS)model.The results obtained by the proposed method in this paper show reasonable agreement with experiments.On the basis of this,effect of different jet flow rates on the time-averaged variables,turbulent kinetic energy,root mean square(RMS)of sound pressure,sound sources distribution and the pulsating pressure distribution in the cavity is studied.The analysis shows that the jet flow has great influence on the cavity flow field and the distribution of pulsating pressure RMS by changing the morphology of the shear layer.The most obvious of these measures is spout4 configuration,the influence mainly in the form of reducing the pulsating pressure of the whole cavity and changing the sound pressure level in the far field.The results show that different jet flow rates have different control effects on pulsating pressure in the cavity and sound pressure level in the far field.Furthermore,the jet flow rates and the suppression effect on the pulsating pressure have no linear relation.     

Noise Prediction in Subsonic Flow Using Seventh-Order Dissipative Compact Scheme on Curvilinear Mesh

In this paper, we investigate the performance of the seventh-order hybrid cell-edge and cell-node dissipative compact scheme (HDCS-E8T7) on curvilinear mesh for noise prediction in subsonic flow. In order to eliminate the errors due to surface conservation law (SCL) is dissatisfied with curvilinear meshes, the symmetrical conservative metric method (SCMM) is adopted to calculate the grid metric derivatives for the HDCS-E8T7. For the simulation of turbulence flow which may have main responsibility for the noise radiation, the new high-order implicit large eddy simulation (HILES) based on the HDCS-E8T7 is employed. Three typical cases, i.e., scattering of acoustic waves by multiple cylinder, sound radiated from a rod-airfoil and subsonic jet noise from nozzle, are chosen to investigate the performance of the new scheme for predicting aeroacoustic problem. The results of scattering of acoustic waves by multiple cylinder indicate that the HDCS-E8T7 satisfying the SCL has high resolution for the aeroacoustic prediction. The potential of the HDCS-E8T7 for aeroacoustic problems on complex geometry is shown by the predicting sound radiated from a rod-airfoil configuration. Moreover, the subsonic jet noise from nozzle has been successfully predicted by the HDCS-E8T7.     

On the Mach number and temperature dependence of jet noise: Results from a simplified numerical model

Numerical simulations of sound radiation from perturbed round jets are used, firstly to explore the structure of the sound sources and then to carry out a parametric study of the effect of jet Mach number and jet temperature. The simplified model problem includes a steady base jet flow, maintained in the absence of disturbances, superimposed with instability waves that are free to interact nonlinearly. Simulations over a range of subsonic jet Mach numbers show that a nonlinear mechanism dominates over a linear mechanism for low-frequency sound radiation, while for supersonic Mach numbers the linear mechanism is dominant. Additional insight is gained from a frequency-wavenumber analysis, including a transformation in the radial direction. With this decomposition, the acoustic field is located by the arc of a circle in plots of radial against streamwise wavenumber for discrete frequencies. The transformation is applied to both the pressure field, showing the sound directivity, and to selected source terms, showing characteristic directivity patterns for the streamwise and radial quadrupole terms. Decreasing the Mach number leads to a reduction in amplitude of the sources and of the sound radiation. Simulations with broadband forcing show that the qualitative effects of Mach number and jet heating are captured by this approach, which requires less resolution than a direct numerical simulation. A significant increase in the strength of the acoustic radiation for cold jets is observed, which is worthy of further investigation.     

Acoustic wave propagation in high-pressure system

Recently, substantial attention is paid to the development of methods of generation of pulsations in high-pressure systems to produce pulsating high-speed water jets. The reason is that the introduction of pulsations into the water jets enables to increase their cutting efficiency due to the fact that the impact pressure (so-called water-hammer pressure) generated by an impact of slug of water on the target material is considerably higher than the stagnation pressure generated by corresponding continuous jet. Special method of pulsating jet generation was developed and tested extensively under the laboratory conditions at the Institute of Geonics in Ostrava. The method is based on the action of acoustic transducer on the pressure liquid and transmission of generated acoustic waves via pressure system to the nozzle. The purpose of the paper is to present results obtained during the research oriented at the determination of acoustic wave propagation in high-pressure system. The final objective of the research is to solve the problem of transmission of acoustic waves through high-pressure water to generate pulsating jet effectively even at larger distances from the acoustic source. In order to be able to simulate numerically acoustic wave propagation in the system, it is necessary among others to determine dependence of the sound speed and second kinematical viscosity on operating pressure. Method of determination of the second kinematical viscosity and speed of sound in liquid using modal analysis of response of the tube filled with liquid to the impact was developed. The response was measured by pressure sensors placed at both ends of the tube. Results obtained and presented in the paper indicate good agreement between experimental data and values of speed of sound calculated from so-called "UNESCO equation". They also show that the value of the second kinematical viscosity of water depends on the pressure.