To study the influences of the biomechanical system on motor control in speechproduction, a comprehensive physiological model of the vocal tract is being designed. In this context, methods have been developed for modeling soft tissue structures, such as the tongue and lips, as continua. This approach provides a foundation for applying finite element methods to simulate the biomechanics of these structures. Specialized finite element code has been implemented to compute movements and deformations of these structures as the solutions of a constrained non-linear 2nd-order system of ordinary differential equations. The large strain finite elements in the computational algorithm are specialized for modeling muscle tissue by incorporating element-wise incompressibility, viscoelastic behavior, and contractile stresses in several directions. The inputs to the model are muscle activation parameters. As a first step towards modeling a vocal tract, a preliminary model of a tongue with eight muscles has been implemented and tested. Large scale computation is required for an acceptable refinement of the model. The adaptation of the computer code to partially vectorized computations, and refinement of the spatial resolution of the finite element model is proposed for this starter grant.
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