Michael Triep 1 , Clemens Kirmse 1 , Michael Stingl 2 , Michael Döllinger 3 , Christoph Brücker 1

1 TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics, Freiberg

2 Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Institute of Applied Mathematics II, Erlangen

3 Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Dept. of Phoniatrics and Pedaudiology, Erlangen

Clinical observations of the self-excited vocal folds in human probands during phonation allow a classification into several glottal opening modulation categories. In general, one distinguishes the healthy regular and other pathological irregular glottis closure types. A slight pathological change of the vocal fold's geometry and/or their movement may have already a strong effect on the flow field and thereby on the flow-induced noise (sources) which is a parameter that characterizes the voice quality (noise-to-harmonic ratio). In order to study the flow-dependent causes for the deterioration in voice quality, a realistic scaled-up three-dimensional (3-D) dynamic glottal cam model which has been already used in a previous study for regular glottal opening modulation situations is used. In this reference case the elliptic-shaped orifice opening cross section and a convergent - straight - divergent lateral and upward movement mimics the realistic time-varying cyclic motion of the healthy vocal folds and results in a realistic volume flow waveform profile.

Four different glottis closure types from clinical observations are mapped individually onto the membrane covered 3-D cam model considering a comparable maximum opening area for all, thus allowing us to differentiate deviations in the flow field from the reference case. The flow through the driven cam model is studied in water while keeping the most important flow parameters similar to the real situation. The advantages of this model are the enlarged time scales and the reproducible boundary conditions for cyclic measurements and visualizations of the flow. The large and small scale 3-D flow structures can be studied and compared in detail with numerical simulations. These aim to determine the harmonic and the noisy components of the flow-induced local source terms and the global noise-to-harmonic ratio, which will give insight to the mechanisms leading to deteriorated voice quality.

Willy Mattheus 1 , Stefan Zörner 2 , Manfred Kaltenbacher 2 , Rüdiger Schwarze 1 , Christoph Brücker 1 , Willy Mattheus 1

1 TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics, Freiberg

2 Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Institute of Smart System-Technologies, Klagenfurt

Ken-Ichi Sakakibara 1 , Hiroshi Imagawa 2 , Hisayuki Yokonishi 2 , Takao Goto 3 , Miwako Kimura 3,4 , Takaharu Nito 2 , Niro Tayama 3

1 Health Sciences Univ., Dept. Comm. Disorders, Sapporo

2 University of Tokyo, Dept. Otolaryngology, Tokyo

3 Intenational Medical Center of Japan, , Tokyo

4 UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dept. Otolaryngology, Dallas

Jaromír Horáček 1 , Václav Uruba 1 , Vojtěch Radolf 1 , Vaclav Uruba 1 , Petr Šidlof 1 , Jan Veselý 1 , Vítězslav  Bula 1

1 Institute of Thermomechanics, Academy of Sciences, Prague