James Brewster
Richard Raspet
Dept. of Phys. and Astron., Natl. Ctr. for Phys. Acoust., Univ. of Mississippi, University, MS 38677
An analytic approach to the study of thermoacoustics and application of this technique to the optimization of a refrigerator driven by an arbitrary acoustic wave will be presented. It will be shown that although a standing wave driven cooler has close to optimum efficiency, the efficiency can be improved by the addition of a traveling component to the wave field flowing in the direction of negative temperature gradient. The value of the acoustic impedance in the gas bordering the cold end of the stack is fixed to an arbitrary value. Application of the continuity of pressure and velocity is combined with the wave equation to yield the value of the pressure wave function and its first two derivatives at the cold end of the stack. Knowledge of these allows the direct calculation of the efficiency of refrigeration and the second derivative of the temperature distribution. [Work supported in part by Office of Naval Research.]