W. Patrick Arnott
Atmospheric Sci. Ctr., Desert Res. Inst., P.O. Box 60220, Reno, NV 89506
Jay Lightfoot
Richard Raspet
Henry E. Bass
Univ. of Mississippi, University, MS 38677
Most previous work in thermoacoustics has considered placing the elements in plane wave resonators. The lowest radial or breathing mode of a cylindrical resonator is also potentially useful for producing thermoacoustic sound sources or refrigerators. An immediate advantage of the radial geometry is the separation of higher modal frequencies from the higher harmonics of the fundamental when the engine is working at large amplitude. Criteria recently developed for deciding which geometry is best will be presented. This will be followed by a comparison of plane and radial wave refrigerators and sound sources. The short stack approximation for both geometries will be used in the comparison. Our derivation of this approximation is not limited by the additional boundary layer approximation. [Work supported by ONR.]