Numerical investigation on the performance of thermo-acoustic engine using a vertical heater

The working principle of thermo-acoustic engines depends on the temperature, velocity and pressure gradients which were developed across the regenerator during operation. Hot heat exchanger and main cold heat exchanger are the two main parts for the development of temperature gradient across the regenerator. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has played a very important role in the numerical modelling of complicated thermo-acoustic phenomena. The basic limitation concerning a CFD simulation of a complete system is the computational cost and time required for computation. This paper focused on the CFD simulation of the thermo-acoustic engine using a vertical heater and its effect on the performance of the thermo-acoustic engine with working fluid like air, hydrogen and helium. Temperature deviation observed for hydrogen was greater than that observed for air and helium. The modelling was done in CATIA V5 R19 modelling software. The meshing and simulation have been done in ANSYS Fluent software.