A beam-membrane biomechanical vocal fold model incorporating posturing and glottal conformation

The posture of the vocal folds produced by laryngeal muscle activation plays a central role in determining the dynamics of voice production. Abnormal vocal fold configurations are frequently associated with inefficient phonation and a variety of voice disorders. Although diverse glottal closure patterns have been observed clinically, the biomechanical mechanisms governing their dynamic behavior and resulting phonatory characteristics remain incompletely understood. Moreover, existing numerical models that incorporate the effects of the intrinsic musculature on posturing and glottal conformation are computationally expensive, which limits their suitability for large-scale parametric investigations. In this work, we introduce a computationally inexpensive vocal fold (VF) model wherein the body and cover VF layers are treated as a composite beam and a coupled membrane, respectively. Intrinsic laryngeal muscle activation, in addition to positioning the arytenoid cartilages and cricothyroid joint, introduces moments at the boundaries of the structure that influence glottal conformation. The model produces phonatory characteristics that are qualitatively consistent with those reported in high-fidelity finite-element models and clinical studies, thereby supporting its predictive capability while offering substantial computational advantage. The proposed framework provides biomechanical insights into the influence of incomplete glottal closure on phonation dynamics and may serve as a computationally tractable tool for investigating mechanisms underlying certain voice disorders.