Physical modeling of bilabial plosives production

Abstract

The context of this study is the physical modeling of speech production. The first step of our approach is to realize in-vivo measurements during the production of the vowel-consonant-vowel sequence /apa/. This measurements concerns intra-oral pressure, acoustic pressure radiated at the lips and labial parameters (aperture and width of the lips) derived from a high-speed video recording of the subject face. In a second time, theoretical models from speech production literature are under investigation to predict the air flow trough the lips. A model is validated by comparing his predictions with results obtained from measurements on a replica of phonatory system. Then, the same experimental set-up is used to introduce an aerodynamic model of supraglottal cavity expansion. Finally, we achieve numerical simulations of a vowel-bilabial plosive-vowel utterance, by using these models. Simulation results highlight the influence of the cheeks expansion during the production of bilabial plosives. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.