PC-TAS: A design environment for phase-change and classical thermoacoustic systems

Abstract

Thermoacoustic technology is a novel approach for high-efficiency, low-cost and environmentally-friendly electricity production, cooling and other applications. In particular, phase-change thermoacoustic conversion is a more recent addition to this field, which is expected to significantly improve the performance of thermoacoustic systems. Here, we present PC-TAS, a tool capable of simulating both phase-change thermoacoustic and classical (no phase change) systems. This tool may be used to investigate how a (phase-change) thermoacoustic system works under steady state by calculating the distributions of acoustic, temperature and species concentration fields. The general model framework is described first, followed by the structure of the code. Next, examples including phase-change and classical thermoacoustic systems are illustrated, and the results are validated against the widely-used software DELTAEC (Ward B et al.. Design environment for low-amplitude thermoa-coustic energy conversion. In: Software users guide. Los Alamos NationalLaboratory; 2008, la-CC-01-13), and against available experimental data. The good agreement indicates that PC-TAS provides a reliable and accessible platform for design and research of thermoacoustic systems, especially for those with phase change.

Keywords

• Thermoacoustics
• Phase-change thermoacoustics
• Thermoacoustic engine
• Thermoacoustic refrigerator