A traveling-wave thermoacoustic engine

Abstract

We have built a thermoacoustic engine composed of a regenerator, two heat exchangers and a looped tube. When a temperature gradient is set up along the regenerator by the pair of the heat exchangers, an acoustic wave spontaneously generates. By using pressure sensors, we simultaneously measure the pressure oscillations of the acoustic wave at 15 points along the looped tube. As a result, we found that a traveling acoustic wave runs around the tube and trough the regenerator from its cold to hot ends.