Abstract:A stacked-screen regenerator is a key component in a thermoacoustic Stirling engine. Therefore, the choice of suitable mesh screens is important in the engine design. To verify the applicability of four empirical equations used in the field of thermoacoustic engines and Stirling engines, this report describes the measurements of heat flow rates transmitted through the stacked screen regenerator inserted in an experimental setup filled with pressurized Argon gas having mean pressure of 0.45 MPa. Results show that the empirical equations reproduce the measured heat flow rates to a mutually similar degree, although their derivation processes differ. Additionally, results suggest that two effective pore radii would be necessary to account for the viscous and thermal behaviors of the gas oscillating in the stacked-screen regenerators.
In this paper, we model tortuous flow channels of a stacked-screen regenerator as a bundle of cylindrical tubes to analyze and design thermoacoustic Stirling engines. The oscillatory flow resistance of stacked-screen regenerators is measured and compared with those obtained using empirical equations to verify the applicability of those empirical equations to oscillating flows of pressurized Ar and He gases. It is then converted to an effective radius parameterized by Re
h and r
0/δν, where Re
h represents the Reynolds number based on velocity oscillation amplitude, r
0 is Ueda’s effective radius (
, where d
h is the hydraulic diameter and D is the mesh wire diameter), and δν denotes the viscous penetration depth. The applicability of the proposed effective radius is demonstrated experimentally when the axial temperature gradient is imposed on the regenerator.
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