Experimental Investigation of Fluid-Structure-Acoustic Couplings by Studying the Resonance Properties of Vocal Tract Models with Yielding Walls

The novel experimental setup has been designed to study fluid-structure-acoustic interaction of the self-oscillating vocal folds model with vocal tract cavities and with a dynamical system originating in vibration of the soft tissue.The compliance of the vocal tract walls changes the phonation threshold so that a very small airflow is sufficient to vibrate the vocal folds.Comparing the same flow rates, the subglottal and radiated sound pressures are higher in the yielding-walled model.The shift of acoustic resonances towards higher frequencies due to the yielding wall corresponds to earlier experimental and numerical simulations.