It has been shown that two Indian drums, the Mridanga and the Tabla, have a most desirable musical quality of harmonic overtones. It was first observed by C.V. Raman that not only do the drums have overtones in a harmonic ratio, but also that the higher overtones are degenerate. This degeneracy gives the Indian drums a more pronounced musical tone. The cause of this remarkable quality is the symmetrical weighting of the drumhead. The Finite Element Method (FEM) was used to numerically explore how a changing density profile affects the eigenvalues of the drum. The use of the Newton-Raphson multi-dimensional root finding technique was explored to find an optimal density profile that will yield the desired harmonic ratios of the frequencies of the drum.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Ball, Brian L.

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 00B011M

Advisor

• Ram-Mohan, L. Ramdas
• Sullivan, John M.

Year

• 2000

Date created

• 2000-01-01

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Physics

Rights statement

• In Copyright