Physical modeling of bilabial plosives production

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's face. In a second time, theoretical models from speech production literature are under investigation to describe air flow in the lips. Their prediction are compared with measurements obtained using an experimental set-up including a replica of vocal folds, which are able to self-oscillate and a rigid replica of lips. Finally, this validation allows us to achieve numerical simulations of the sequence /apa/. The comparison between the measured intra oral pressure and the simulated one leads us to take into account for the cheeks expansion in the physical modeling of bilabial plosives.