Harmonic hydro-mechanical movement

Abstract

The current theoretical physics tools used to describe the acoustic phenomena that occur outside the ear, such as the specific impedance, the acoustic impedance and the mechanical impedance are not applicable to describe the cochlear mechanics. For this reason this study uses the hydro-mechanical impedance concept. The latter is only applicable to a harmonic hydro-mechanical systems, which consist of a rigid recipient, filled with liquid and two elastic windows that relate the system with a sound environment, considering that the distance between them should be much smaller than the sound wavelength. This system could be considered as the most primitive model inner ear to build. The movement of the contained fluid in this system has particular characteristics that differentiate it from the wave motion and from a simple mass-spring-dumping vibration system. In order to demonstrate the existence of the harmonic hydro-mechanical movement, was modeled and built an equivalent harmonic electrical system, which results corresponded with the ones from the theoretical mathematical model. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.