The deformations are exaggerated to show the shapes more clearly. The pictures below show the qualitative mode shapes of a few of the first eigenmodes. Just a second or so after striking the fork, most of the higher modes are dampened out and all that can be heard is the sound of the fundamental mode as a clean tone. The higher eigenfrequencies correspond to resonant modes that will be dampened out more quickly than the lowest eigenfrequency of the so-called fundamental mode. Each mode is associated with a particular eigenfrequency and the combination of all eigenfrequencies creates the specific timbre that makes the characteristic sound of a tuning fork. When you strike a tuning fork, it will vibrate in a complex motion pattern that mathematically can be described as the superposition of so-called resonant modes, or eigenmodes. The mechanism of vibration is similar in all these cases, so let’s discuss that first. In addition to musical applications, there are industrial applications of tuning fork-like structures, such as in MEMS gyroscopes. The picture shows a tuning fork for the standard concert pitch 440 Hz.

You can buy tuning forks corresponding to all of these standards, but also tuning forks for other notes such as C, E, and G. For example, the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra use 442 Hz and many orchestras in Europe use 443 Hz. However, there are also other standards in use, frequently based on the note A. The most common standard pitch is 440 Hz for the note A. This blog post will give you an overview of the Tuning Fork application and the structural vibration model that it is based on.Ī tuning fork is used to calibrate instruments to a standard pitch. In order to make it easy to get started with the Application Builder, we included a few example applications in the Application Libraries of COMSOL Multiphysics version 5.0.

Frequency of tuning fork