Author(s)

Masanori Nakamura, Kazunori Nozaki, Haruka Takimoto, Kazuya Nagamune, Motoharu Fujigaki, Shigeo Wada

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In order to understand the contribution of teeth vibration to the production of sibilant/s/, the pre-sent study was designed to develop a method of simultaneously measuring aeroacoustic sounds and the vibration of an obstacle. To measure the vibration without disturbing flow, the Michelson interferometer was employed. The flow channel, which had an obstacle wall inside of it, was fabricated such that it morphologically mimicked the simplified geometry of the oral cavity. Given airflows at a flow rate of 7.5 × 10–4 m3/s from the inlet, aeroacoustic sounds were generated. A spectrum analy-sis of the data demonstrated two prominent peaks in the sound at 1,300 and 3,500 Hz and one peak in the wall vibration at 3,500 Hz. The correlation in peak frequencies between the sound and wall vibration suggests that the sound at 3,500 Hz was induced by the wall vibration. In fact, the sound amplitude at 3,500 Hz decreased when the obstacle wall was thickened, which increased its rigidity (p < 0.05, t-test). The experimental results demonstrate that the developed techniques are capable of measuring aeroacoustic sound and obstacle wall vibration simultaneously, and suggest the potential to pave the way for detailed analysis of the production of sibilant sounds /s/.

Acoustic Measurement; Vibration Measurement; Michelson Interferometer; Aeroacoustics; Sibilant/s/

Nakamura, M. , Nozaki, K. , Takimoto, H. , Nagamune, K. , Fujigaki, M. and Wada, S. (2011) Simultaneous measurements of aeroacoustic sounds and wall vibration for exploring the contribution of tooth vibration in the production of sibilant sounds/s/. Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering, 4, 83-89. doi: 10.4236/jbise.2011.42011.