Investigation On Thermoacoustic Engine And Thermoacoustic Refrigerator

Thermoacoustic engine is absolutely a new type of engine, which is based on the thermoacoustic effect. Without any moving part and with noble gas as working fluid, it has many advantages over the traditional engines, such as simplicity, reliability, long non-maintenance operation and pollution free. Pulse-tube refrigeration driven by thermoacoustic prime has promising application in gas liquefaction. And advances have been achieved in air-condition and refrigeration with thermoacoustic refrigerator. In sum, the study of thermoacoustic engine is now in the focus of refrigeration field.After a detailed review on the history of research and recent advances on thermoacoustics, the background laws and main theories of thermoacoustics are summarized. Then the improved thermoacoustic refrigerator driven by the loudspeaker is introduced. With air at normal pressure as working fluid, a non-load temperature drop of 27°C is obtained on this refrigerator. In addition, some common stacks are compared in respects of manufacture, thermoacoustic effect and flow resistance.A small traveling thermoacoustic engine is designed and built up. We carried on primary experiments on this engine and analyze the effect of engine with thermoacoustic Network Model Method. After analysis, we learn that, in the regenerator, the phase angle between pressure and volume velocity is not proper, which leads to bad effect of the engine. The next step is to improve the engine to obtain good phase in the regenerator.