SNORING - LINEAR-STABILITY ANALYSIS AND IN-VITRO EXPERIMENTS

A theoretical and experimental study is presented of the aeroelastic i nstability of the human soft palate, which can explain the occurrence of snoring. The soft palate is modelled by a beam clamped at its leadi ng edge and free at its trailing edge. The continuous and discrete cas es are investigated. Only the two first modes of vibration of the soft palate are taken into account. The flow is incompressible, inviscid a nd one-dimensional. Structural damping and flow nonstationarities can be considered. Theory shows that the soft palate loses its stability b y flutter and that this instability is mainly controlled by a single d imensionless parameter which can be easily interpreted from a medical point of view. An experimental apparatus which produces sounds very cl ose to human snoring is described. Agreement between theory and experi ments is good. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited