Numerical investigation of porous stack for a solar-powered thermoacoustic refrigerator

Abstract

This article proposes a numerical analysis for performance improvement of the stack, which represents a crucial element on the solar-powered thermoacoustic refrigerator. The stack is considered as a saturated parallelepiped homogeneous porous media. Numerical simulation of the flow and the heat transfer in the thermoacoustic refrigerator is carried out. The physical flow is governed by the modified Darcy–Brinkmann–Forchheimer model. The governing equations are solved numerically using the lattice Boltzmann method. Furthermore, the local thermal equilibrium assumption is applied to examine heat transfer. Particular attention is paid a new form of the lattice Boltzmann equation system describing the flow and the heat transfer in porous media and fluid regions. The effects of several parameters characterizing the thermal behaviour in the porous medium are studied. The parametric results lead to the optimization of the porous media form. The presence of the viscous dissipation term in the heat transfer formulation within the thermoacoustic system is particularly highlighted, due to its significant effects introduced by the Eckert number.