G080013 Basic Study on Control of Acoustic Field in Straight-Type Cascade Thermoacoustic Engine

Abstract

Since a thermoacoustic engine is an external combustion engine triggered by the Stirling cycle, it has the potential to draw work out of multiple heat sources such as industrial exhaust heat, automobile exhaust heat and solar energy. Also, as it has a simple structure and uses sound waves for heat exchange, and requires no moving parts such as pistons and turbines, it offers advantages of being a low-cost, long-use, and maintenance-free system. On the other hand, there are issues to be solved for its practical use. Although a thermoacoustic engine has an advantage of requiring no moving parts, it has a disadvantage of possessing no system to adjust the acoustic field that is suitable for heat exchange. This research on a thermoacoustic engine operating by self-excited oscillation is an attempt to determine the device configuration that treats all the acoustic fields following a certain point as traveling-wave phases by the use of a numerical calculation.