Investigation on thermoacoustic cooling device with variation in stack plate size and input acoustic energy

Abstract

A loudspeaker-driven thermoacoustic cooler device has been designed, constructed and tested to gain better understanding of its cooling performance. The influence of stack plate size to its performance was investigated. The plate was made of acrylic sheet in three different length variations, which were 6, 5 and 4. Each variation of experiment was conducted by varying plate thickness of the stack, 0.15, 0.5 and 1 mm, respectively. The experiments were conducted with various driver voltage input starting from setting 4–9 (Voltage peak-to-peak). The temperatures at the area of both ends of the parallel plate stack, which are cold side and hot side, were recorded. The results showed that thermoacoustic cooling effect occurred immediately and escalated rapidly in 2 min and showed a stable cooling temperature after 10 min. The experimental results confirmed that better thermal performance of the device and faster cooling rate yielded from higher voltage input. For each set of experiment, the input voltage setting, the operating frequency and other parameter of the stack were maintained the same. The thermal performance and cooling rate increased with the decrease of plate thickness. The largest temperature difference, 14.7 °C, was achieved with 0.15 mm plate thickness with 6 cm length at voltage setting 9. The experimental results showed that the effects of using different plate length were not the same for each thickness of stack plate. However, Stack plate size of 0.5 mm thickness and 6 cm length at the input voltage setting of 9, was arguably the optimum size in terms of consistent performance in cooling.