Experimental observation on a small-scale thermoacoustic prime mover

INTRODUCTION In the past 30 years, much progress has been achieved in thermoacoustic research (Backhaus and Swift, 1999; Garrett et al., 1993; Zhou and Matsubara,1998). However, most of them were still at laboratory scale. Aiming for industrial applications, recent re-searches began to pay attention to larger or smaller scale systems. The problem of heat dissipation from miniature high-tech products (say ICs, MEMS) at-tracts more attention due to the higher heat flux ac-companying th…

Experimental observation on a small-scale thermoacoustic prime mover

A miniature thermoacoustic prime mover, consuming heat to radiate sound, may be considered as a potential way of heat management in microcircuits because of its simplicity and stability. A prototype with variable resonant tube length of 10 to 25 cm was built, and experiments were carried out to observe its performance, such as onset temperature, oscillation amplitude and operating frequency. The results with atmospheric air showed that proper structures and operating conditions can make the system start an oscillation at a temperature lower than 100 °C, which proves the feasibility of potential usage in electronic units. The influences of stack position, heat input power or tube inclination on the oscillation amplitude, onset temperature and operating frequency are also presented. Project supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (No. 50536040), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2005038280), and the Natural Sciences Foundation of Zhejiang Province (No. Y104326), China