Fatigue testing of woodwind reeds****

位于安大略省巴里市的莱杰尔簧片公司是乐器合成簧片开发和制造领域的世界领先者。他们的产品包括各种强度和设计的萨克斯管、单簧管、大管和双簧管。与传统的天然甘蔗芦苇相比，合成芦苇表现出更好的耐用性，并且对环境条件不敏感，从而使产品更符合音乐家的要求。这就是说，莱杰尔没有办法精确地测量和量化与天然甘蔗芦苇相比的芦苇的表现。该公司有兴趣开发一种高度可靠和校准良好的芦苇特征描述方法。这将使Legere能够更好地了解他们的合成芦苇的疲劳行为，并开发出寿命更长的新芦苇，这将有助于提高其合成产品与甘蔗芦苇的成本效益比。*我实验室最近的工作重点是天然甘蔗芦苇的机械特性，之前的工作包括对芦苇质量的感知。拟议的研究项目将涉及开发一种系统，以便能够分析长期动态芦苇行为，以及使用人造和天然甘蔗芦苇系统进行初步测试。该方法将包括针对特定的簧片刚度-口罩组合的输出声功率和簧片位移之间的校准，以便能够对长期的簧片退化进行准确的测量。

Legere reeds, located in Barrie, Ontario, is a world leader in the development and manufacturing of synthetic reeds for musical instruments. Their products include saxophone, clarinet, bassoon and oboe reeds of various strengths and designs. Synthetic reeds exhibit improved durability relative to traditional natural cane reeds and no sensitivity to ambient conditions, resulting in a product that is more consistent to the musician. That said, Legere does not have a way to precisely measure and quantify the performance of their reeds in comparison to natural cane reeds. The company is interested in developing a methodology for highly reliable and well-calibrated characterisation of reeds. This would allow Legere to better understand the fatigue behaviour of their synthetic reeds and to develop new reeds that last even longer, which would help improve the cost-benefit ratio of their synthetic products versus cane reeds.****Recent work in my lab has focused on the mechanical characterisation of natural cane reeds and previous work has included the perception of reed quality. The proposed research project will involve the development of a system to allow analysis of long-term dynamic reed behaviour, as well as initial tests with the system of both synthetic and natural cane reeds. The approach will include calibrations between output sound power and reed displacement for specific reed stiffness-mouthpiece combinations, such that accurate measurements can be made for long-term reed degradation.