Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Musical Instruments

Music and musical instruments have always fascinated people. Some instruments, such as the violins of Stradivari or the guitars of Torres, have given rise to veritable myths. For many musicians, the sound of these instruments remains unrivaled to this day. This myth persists, although in the meantime several studies have proven that violin makers today are capable of building instruments of comparable quality. Nevertheless, musicians are able to detect very small differences between instruments, and thus even seemingly identical instruments differ audibly in sound. In the case of carefully crafted instruments of identical design, these differences can be traced back to the variability of the material parameters of the woods used.

Detailed computer models of guitars are physically challenging.  In addition to the complex geometry, orthotropic, i.e. direction-dependent, material modeling and modeling of the fluid-structure interaction between the guitar body and the enclosed air must be accomplished. Methods of parametric model order reduction and methods of uncertainty quantification developed at the institute are also used to identify the material parameters. The models developed at the institute can then be used as virtual prototypes to indicate to instrument manufacturers how they can specifically influence and improve their instruments. This is particularly beneficial from the point of view that two geometrically identical instruments can sound very different.