A semi-polar grid strategy for the three-dimensional finite element simulation of vowel-vowel sequences

Three-dimensional computational acoustic models need very detailed 3D vocal tract geometries to generate high quality sounds. Static geometries can be obtained from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), but it is not currently possible to capture dynamic MRI-based geometries with sufficient spatial and time resolution. One possible solution consists in interpolating between static geometries, but this is a complex task. We instead propose herein to use a semi-polar grid to extract 2D cross-sections from the static 3D geometries, and then interpolate them to obtain the vocal tract dynamics. Other approaches such as the adaptive grid have also been explored. In this method, cross-sections are defined perpendicular to the vocal tract midline, as typically done in 1D to obtain the vocal tract area functions. However, intersections between adjacent cross-sections may occur during the interpolation process, especially when the vocal tract midline quickly changes its orientation. In contrast, the semi-polar grid prevents these intersections because the plane orientations are fixed over time. Finite element simulations of static vowels are first conducted, showing that 3D acoustic wave propagation is not significantly altered when the semi-polar grid is used instead of the adaptive grid. The vowel-vowel sequence [Ai] is finally simulated to demonstrate the method.