Date of Award

Spring 2020

Thesis Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Honors Bachelor of Arts

Department

Physics

Sponsor

Whitney Coyle

Committee Member

Thomas Moore

Committee Member

Rochelle Elva

Abstract

Through the use of the lattice Boltzmann method, a series of computational models were created to simulate air flow in woodwind instruments. Start- ing as a two-dimensional code in Matlab running on the CPU, the model went through a series of iterations before becoming a three-dimension code in Fortran that was accelerated through the use of GPU parallel computing. The accuracy and stability of the model are shown by comparison to various published benchmark tests. Thus far, the air flow in organ pipes for a two dimensional model was simulated showing oscillating flow by the labium as expected. This thesis offers the mathematical and computational background as well as a description of the implementation of the basic LBM for simulat- ing flow in musical instruments. The method described here is meant as a first step to a code that is highly flexible and can be used to study many as- pects of acoustics in musical instruments. Future applicability of the model includes observing flow at the exit of both square and round organ pipes in addition to modeling the reed-mouthpiece system of the clarinet.

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