The goal of this Senior Capstone Design Project is to design and manufacture five physical models of the human vocal tract, one for each of five chosen American English vowels. (There are about a dozen vowel sounds in American English not just the five defined in our alphabet.) These models will produce the sound of each vowel when joined with an electro-larynx input.

Vowels are the focus of this project because they are the simplest of the phonemes to model. The vocal tract stays relatively stationary during the production of each vowel and does not require the build-up and subsequent release of air pressure that some consonants require. These qualities will allow me to build five solid and stand-alone models that can be used time and time again to produce their given vowel sound without need for tuning or adjustment.