Numerical investigation of a standing-wave thermoacoustic device

The thermoacoustic effect concerns conversion of energy between a gas and a solid in the presence of acoustic waves. Although the working principle is well understood, the optimal design of thermoacoustic devices remains a challenge. The present work aims to perform a numerical simulation of a simple standing-wave thermoacoustic device. The analysis of the flow and the prediction of the heat transfer are performed by solving the non-linear unsteady Navier-Stokes equations using the finite volume method implemented in the commercial code ANSYS-CFX. The goal of this work is to study the effect of the stack temperature gradient, on the acoustic pressure and the produced acoustic power. This stack temperature gradient generates the thermoacoustic instability in standing-wave thermoacoustic resonator. The obtained results show an increase of the acoustic pressure and the acoustic power while increasing in the stack temperature gradient. The thermodynamic cycles of the thermoacoustic device are illustrated and observed for the different stack temperature gradients.