Effect of sound-induced vibrations of the pinna on head-related transfer functions: Experimental and numerical investigations

Abstract

Numerical simulations of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) conventionally assume a rigid boundary condition for the pinna. The human pinna, however, is an elastic deformable body that can vibrate due to incident acoustic waves. This work investigates how sound-induced vibrations of the pinna can affect simulated HRTF magnitudes. The work will motivate the research question by measuring the sound-induced vibrational patterns of an artificial pinna with a high-speed holographic interferometric system. Then, finite element simulations are used to determine HRTFs for a tabletop model of the B&K 5128 head and torso simulator for a number of directions. Two scenarios are explored: one where the pinna is modeled as perfectly rigid, and another where the pinna is modeled as linear elastic with material properties close to that of auricular cartilage. The findings suggest that pinna vibrations have negligible effects on HRTF magnitudes up to 5 kHz. The same conclusion, albeit with less certainty, is drawn for higher frequencies. Finally, the importance of the elastic domain's material properties is emphasized and possible implications for validation studies on dummy heads 1as well as the limitations of the present work are discussed in detail.