Study on the onset temperature of a standing-wave thermoacoustic engine based on circuit network theory

Onset mechanism is one of the most fundamental issues in thermoacoustic field. However, the onset conditions and the phenomena happening in the onset process have not been well explained theoretically. In this paper, a novel model based on the circuit network analogy is proposed to predict the onset temperature of a standing-wave thermoacoustic engine. The activity and instability criteria are proposed to be the onset criteria in the model. The influences of the porosity of the heat exchanger and the stack, and the length of the resonant tube on the onset temperature are analyzed. The calculated results are in agreement with the experimental results, which indicates that the activity and instability criteria can be used to predict the onset conditions of a thermoacoustic engine.