Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.

375–381 (2008)

COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS ON SOUNDING MECHANISM

IN AIR-REED INSTRUMENTS
J. Tsuchida*, T. Fujisawa** and G. Yagawa***

* Toyota Motor Corporation, 1 Toyota-cho, Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture 471-8571, Japan
** Prometech Software Inc., 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
*** Toyo University, 2-36-5 Hakusan, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-0001, Japan
1-32-19, Akatsutsumi, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
E-Mail: yagawa@eng.toyo.ac.jp (Corresponding Author)

ABSTRACT: The sounding mechanism in air-reed instruments is investigated based on the computational fluid
dynamics. While previous studies have assumed a sound source based on the acoustic theory, the authors attempt in
the present study to explain the source of sound as an essential factor defining the timbre of musical instruments. To
deal with the high computational cost required to capture minute changes in pressure, a parallel supercomputer is
employed for computation. The computational results are consistent with Brown’s experimental equation, and new
frequency components revealed only in this three-dimensional analysis are identified and attributed to the harmonics
of the air jet.
Keywords: computational fluid dynamics, finite element method, edge tone, reed instruments, sounding
mechanism

1. INTRODUCTION distance between the nozzle and the edge. In

Air-reed instrument is a kind of aerophone such
as pipe organs, flutes, recorders or bamboo flutes
that neither have mechanically oscillating parts
nor a sound produced by human lips as in playing
a brass instrument (Ando, 1988; Yoshikawa,
1993). These instruments have a wedge-shaped
structure called “edge”. The blown jet causes self-
excited oscillation by the edge and sound is then
generated. Scientific researches on air-reed
instruments have been conducted since the latter
half of the 1960s. The mechanism of sound
generation has been studied from an acoustic
point of view, and precise experiments have
revealed the oscillating sheet behavior of an air jet
and the feedback mechanism between the jet and
the resonance tube (Ando, 1988; Brown, 1937;
Coltman, 1968; Coltman, 1990; Cremer and Ising,
1967/68; Elder, 1973; Fletcher, 1976; Yoshikawa
and Saneyoshi, 1980; Yoshikawa, 1991;
Yoshikawa, 1993). However, since studies of
sound generation based on the acoustic theory
have assumed a fluid behavior which is essential
for air-reed instruments sounding, being wave,
analysis results become inaccurate due to the
following reasons.
1. It is assumed that there is a very weak sound
source. The sound caused by the edge (edge
tone) is not generated according to the
combination of blown jet strength and
reality, it takes an appreciable length of time
for the initial minute oscillation to be
amplified to a stable edge tone, and the
amount of time will change according to other
conditions.
2. Basically only single frequency with minute
amplitude is treated; it is hard to analyze
numerically the oscillation with big amplitude
and the onset of a sound signal.
To clarify the mechanism of sound generation in
air-reed instruments in detail, we adopt
computational fluid dynamics for examining the
influence of performance conditions and shape of
instruments, in addition to the precise harmonic
makeup of the generated sound. Moreover, as the
sound of an instrument changes rapidly in the first
ten milliseconds when the standing wave is
established and this change is audible to humans
as “sound quality” (Yoshikawa, 1993), it is
necessary to perform numerical simulations with
high precision, particularly for the onset of a
sound.
The purpose of the present study is to perform a
numerical analysis of sound generation in an air-
reed instrument, and to investigate the mechanism
of sound generation and the primary factor that
determines “tone”. The analysis is based on fluid
mechanics and executed on a massively parallel
supercomputer. It is hoped that the quantitative

Received: 24 Nov. 2007; Revised: 16 Mar. 2008; Accepted: 14 Apr. 2008

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 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 2, No. 3 (2008)
numerical simulation of musical instrument sound
will lead to the establishment of a scientific
measure for designing instruments (Takeuchi,
Yamamoto and Kawauchi, 1988). Also, this study
can be directly applied to the design of rapid
transit railway, car, airplane, electric device, etc.,
in which reduction of the fluid noise is of primary
concern.
2. GOVERNING EQUATIONS AND
SOLUTION ALGORITHM
2.1 Finite element fluid analysis and hybrid
solution method
As sound propagates in a medium as a
longitudinal pressure wave, acoustic phenomena
have traditionally been regarded as compressible
fluid mechanics. However, the variation in
pressure due to the passage of sound is of the
order of 10-3 to 10-5 times the static pressure of the
ambient fluid, rendering it difficult to capture
both the static pressure of the fluid and the sound
pressure simultaneously with satisfactory
accuracy. Furthermore, the simulation of sound
propagation as a compressible fluid phenomenon
in real-world volumes requires enormous
computational power, and remains almost
impossible even using today’s supercomputers.
Solving low Mach number flow using the
compressible Navier-Stokes equation numerically
also involves a stiffness problem and the
numerical solution may not converge or accuracy
may be severely degraded.
In this study, a hybrid solution method (Kato et
al., 1994), in which sound generation and sound
propagation are analyzed separately, is adopted.
The behavior of air is computed assuming
incompressible flow using the computed pressure
change; generated sound is computed by
aerodynamic sound prediction based on the
Lighthill theory (1952). The finite element
method (FEM) and the fractional step method
(Donea, Giuliani and Lavel, 1982) are adopted as
the numerical analysis scheme of fluid.
2.2 Discretization of Navier-Stokes equation
The Navier-Stokes equation and continuity
equation assuming negligible external force are as
follows.
∂u 1
+ (u ⋅ ∇) = −∇p + Δu (1)
∂t Re
∇⋅u = 0 (2)
where u and p are normalized velocity and
pressure, and Re is the Reynolds number.
376
Temporally discretizing Eqs. (1) and (2) by the
fractional step method (Donea, Giuliani and Lavel,
1982), we have
u n +1 − u n 1
+ (u n ⋅ ∇)u n = −∇p n +1 + Δu n (3)
Δt Re
∇ ⋅ u n+1 = 0 (4)
where n is the time step. Then, the intermediate
flow velocity u~ is defined as follows,
~ = u n − Δt ⎧(u n ⋅ ∇)u n − 1 Δu n ⎫
⎨ ⎬
⎩ ⎭
u (5)
Re
where Δt is the time increment. By taking the
divergence of Eq. (3) and substituting Eq. (4), we
obtain the following Poisson’s equation for
pressure.
1
∇p n+1 = ~
∇⋅u (6)
Δt
Then, by subtracting Eq. (5) from Eq. (3), the
following equation for velocity is obtained.
~ − Δt∇p n+1
u n+1 = u (7)
The above calculation procedures are summarized
as follows. First, the intermediate flow velocity u~
is calculated using Eq. (5), and pressure pn+1 is
calculated by substituting u~ for Eq. (6). Then
velocity un+1 is calculated by substituting the
pressure for Eq. (7). Since the Reynolds number
of the flow in this study is under 500, the upwind
method and the turbulence model are not adopted.
Both velocity and pressure fields are interpolated
using linear tetrahedral elements (P1-P1 element).
2.3 Lighthill’s theory and Curle’s equation
In air-reed instruments, the Mach number of air
jets around the edge is at most 0.06. Under this
condition, if the distance between the sound
source and the observation point is sufficiently
long, the Curle’s equation (Curle, 1995), a
solution of the Lighthill’s theory (Lighthill, 1952),
∫ n p(y, t − x / c )dS
can be derived as
1 xi ∂
pα (x, t ) = (8)
4πc0 x 2 ∂t
i 0
S
where x is the coordinate of the observation point,
p is the pressure against the object surface, S is
the object surface, x = | x|, y is the coordinate in
the analysis domain, ni is the outward normal
vector on S, and c0 is the speed of sound in the
static fluid. Therefore, if the pressure of the edge
surface is found, the sound pressure at the
observation point can be determined using Eq. (8).
 Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics Vol. 2, No. 3 (2008)

2.4 Parallel computing 3. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF EDGE

TONE
Large computational grids are required to capture
microscopic phenomenon such as sound
3.1 Analysis model and boundary conditions
generation. Due to the extremely large number of
computations involved, parallel analysis using a Fig. 1 shows the analysis model of the reed-edge
massively parallel supercomputer is indispensable. for fluid analysis. This model is divided into 4-
Parallel computing method in finite element node tetrahedral elements, a total of 163,510
analysis can be classified into element-based and nodes or 918,580 elements (Fig. 2). The nodes of
node-based methods. In the present study, we the finite elements are concentrated around the
employ node-based parallelization of the free nozzle and the edge in order to perform efficient
mesh method (FMM) (Fujisawa, Inaba and fluid analysis. The inflow condition is set at the
Yagawa, 2003; Shirazaki and Yagawa, 1999; left end of the nozzle, a free outflow condition
Yagawa and Yamada, 1996), which is a node- (p = 0) is set at the top, bottom and right side of
based finite element method. A node-based data the model, and a no-slip condition is set for the
structure is employed to memorize sparse rest of the model.
matrices and connectivity data between nodes.
The FMM performs both mesh generation and
solution of equations in a seamless manner.
Therefore, it is a powerful method for adaptive
analysis on a parallel computer. Although a fixed
computational grid is employed in this study,
FMM-based data structures and node-based
parallel computing are adopted in order to
perform numerical analysis more effectively in
future.

2.5 Three-dimensional finite element model

The three-dimensional FE model used in this
study is constructed using a mesh generator and
boundary condition setting tool which are parts of
the large-scale computational mechanics system Fig. 2 FE mesh of an air-reed instrument.
developed in the ADVENTURE project (Ref. 1).
3.2 Analysis condition
Analysis was performed with varying velocities
No-slip condition of air jets injected into the nozzle (3.0, 5.0 and
7.0 m/s). The conditions common to all analyses
u=U p=0
v=0 No-slip condition are listed in Table 1, and detailed analysis
w=0 conditions for each analysis are shown in Table 2.
The representative length is 1.0-3 m, which is the
thickness of nozzle. The above analyses were
20
performed with the same model as shown in
Figs. 1 and 2, and any sensitivity analysis
regarding model shape, mesh division and
boundary condition remains to be a future work.

Table 1 Analysis conditions common to all simulation

cases.
No-slip condition
Number of nodes 163,510
No-slip condition Number of elements 918,580 (tetrahedral 4-node element)
Δt 0.002 (non-dimensional time)
Fig. 1 3D analysis model of an air-reed instrument
(mm). Representative length 1.0 × 10 -3 m
Kinematic viscosity 1.537 × 10 -5 m2/s
1 m in the x direction,
Observation point
1 m in the y direction

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Table 2 Analysis conditions of each simulation case. window and no smoothing technique was
employed.
Representative
velocity Reynolds number Analysis time
Case 1 3.0 m/s 195.18 0.067 s (100,000 steps)
Case 2 5.0 m/s 325.3 0.040 s (100,000 steps)
Case 3 7.0 m/s 455.42 0.043 s (150,000 steps)

3.3 Computational results

We used 2 nodes (16 processors) of the Hitachi
SR8000 supercomputer for the analysis, and
100,000-steps analysis took approximately 70
hours.
Fig. 3 shows the |u| = 1.0 iso-surface, which is a
non-dimensional velocity in Case 2. Fig. 4 shows
the absolute value of velocity in the plane y = 7.5
for Case 2. This figure shows that the air jet flows
in from the nozzle and oscillates on the upper and
lower sides of the reed edge. This oscillation can
be seen in both Case 1 and Case 3.
Fig. 3 Iso-surface of |u| = 1.0 (Case 2);
upper: t = 0.0388 s, lower: t = 0.0396 s.
The sound pressure was computed from the
pressure distribution on the reed edge surface
with the Curle’s equation in (8), and the power
spectrum by FFT analysis. The integration in the
Curle’s equation in (8) was performed by taking
the summation of the product of an area of
surface patch of tetrahedral shape facing the edge
and the average pressure of three nodes
composing the surface patch. On the other hand,
the FFT analysis was performed with the Hanning
Fig. 4 Absolute value of velocity at y = 7.5 (Case 2);
upper: t = 0.0388 s, lower: t = 0.0396 s.
Figs. 5, 7 and 9 show that the faster the inlet
velocity of jet is, the shorter the time it takes for
the self-excited oscillation to occur. Figs. 6, 8 and
10 give the corresponding power spectra.
3.4 Comparison with Brown’s experimental
equation
Brown (1937) performed a detailed experiment
concerning the edge tone and obtained the
following experimental formula.
⎧ 1 ⎫
f = 0.466 j (100U − 40)⎨ − 0.07 ⎬
⎩ ⎭
( j = 1.0,2.3,3.8,5.4)
100 l
(9)
where f (Hz) is the frequency of the edge tone, U
(m/s) is the velocity of the air jet, and l (m) is the
distance from the edge. The parameter j is the
oscillation mode, which is determined from U and
l. If the distance from the edge is constant, j
increases with flow velocity. Fig. 11 shows the
relationships among U, l and f quoted from
Brown (1937). The step-like features in the graph
represent the points at which the value of j
changes.
Fig. 12 is a comparison between Brown’s
experimental equation and the present analysis
results. The two straight lines are Brown’s
experimental equation for j = 1.0 and 2.3, and the
three marks on the straight lines are the results for
v = 3.0, 5.0 and 7.0 m/s. The central mark is the
frequency with the highest intensity, and the other
two marks have half the intensity.
According to Fig. 12, the result for v = 3.0 m/s
corresponds to a value of j = 1.0 in Brown’s
experimental equation, and the results for v = 5.0
and 7.0 m/s correspond to j = 2.3. Therefore, it is
considered that the change in the oscillating mode
occurs between v = 3.0 m/s and v = 5.0 m/s.
As can be seen in Figs. 6, 8 and 10, some
minor frequency components are present in the

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simulated results in addition to the major frequency component corresponding to Brown’s experimental
equation. These minor components are considered to be the harmonic components of the edge tone.

Fig. 5 Sound pressure vs. time (Case 1). Fig. 6 Power spectrum (Case 1).

Fig. 7 Sound pressure vs. time (Case 2). Fig. 8 Power spectrum (Case 2).

Fig. 9 Sound pressure vs. time (Case 3). Fig. 10 Power spectrum (Case 3).

Fig. 11 Relationship between velocity,

distance to reed edge and
frequency (Brown, 1937).
Range of edge-tone production
h=1.5 cm h=0.75 cm
h=1.0 cm h=0.50 cm

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j=1.0 j=2.3
v=3.0 (m/sec) v=5.0 (m/sec)
v=0.7 (m/sec)
Fig. 12 Comparison of Brown’s experimental
equation and results of present analysis.
3.5 Discussion
The harmonic components mentioned above are
observed in the three-dimensional case, but not in
the two-dimensional analysis (Yagawa, Shirazaki
and Hizaki, 1999). These harmonic components
might be generated from the three-dimensional
behavior of the air around the edge. However,
these two analyses are not directly comparable
because resolution of computational grids and
other conditions are not the same for the two
models, although both the two-dimensional model
and three-dimensional model have the same shape
of edge at a cross section. Further investigation
will be required.
Recent study in acoustics shows that air-reed
instruments have a feedback mechanism called
acoustic feedback between the edge and the
resonance tube (Yoshikawa and Saneyoshi, 1980;
Yoshikawa, 1991). The acoustic effect, namely
compressibility effect of fluid, plays an essential
role in this feedback mechanism. On the other
hand, the edge tone also has a feedback
mechanism called hydrodynamic feedback in
which pressure changes at the edge surface affect
the oscillation of the air jet. This mechanism is
thought to have no coupled effects with sound
(Nishimura, 2001). However, there are various
arguments on whether the hydrodynamic
feedback requires the compressibility of fluid or
not.
We consider through this study that the
hydrodynamic feedback could be captured by the
incompressible fluid model at some level.
However, it remains a future subject of study on
the influence that compressibility of fluid has on
hydrodynamic feedback by performing
compressible flow analysis.
380
4. CONCLUSIONS
Three-dimensional incompressible fluid
simulations of the edge tone which is the sound
source of air-reed instruments were performed in
order to find the mechanism of sound generation
in terms of fluid mechanics. The result shows that
the simulation successfully resolved the process
from initiation of the air jet to self-excited
oscillation and stabilization of the edge tone
through three-dimensional numerical fluid
analysis, and it was confirmed that the strongest
frequency component corresponds to the
frequency component derived by Brown’s
experimental equation. Furthermore, the existence
of two or more minor frequency components in
addition to the main frequency component was
confirmed. These minor components have not
been observed in the two-dimensional fluid
analysis, and are assigned to harmonic
components of the edge tone. Lastly, the transfer
of oscillation mode which is one of the features of
the edge tone is captured under the assumption of
incompressible fluid. However, the extent of the
influence of compressibility of the fluid on an
edge tone and the acoustic effect of a resonance
tube remain to be clarified in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors express their appreciation to Prof. S.
Yoshikawa at the Kyusyu University for valuable
advice about theories and experiments of air-reed
instruments from an acoustic point of view. The
present research was supported in part by the
Frontier Simulation Software for Industrial
Science (FSIS) project at the University of Tokyo.
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