Technical Paper
Performance of Additive Manufactured Stacks in a Small Scale Thermoacoustic Heat Engine
2019-06-05
2019-01-1534
Thermoacoustic heat engines (TAHEs) are external combustion engines primarily designed to convert thermal power into acoustic power and, eventually, into mechanical, electric or other forms of high grade power. TAHEs rely on the presence of a porous core, often referred to as “stack”. A temperature gradient is established along the porous core and quasi-adiabatic heat exchanges occur between the solid walls of the pores and the surrounding gaseous medium undergoing pressure fluctuations. The internal geometry of the stack has tremendous impact on the efficiency of thermal-to-acoustic power conversion. In this study, the selective laser melting (SLM) has been used to produce stacks. The SLM is an additive manufacturing (AM) technique designed for 3D metal printing. It is based on high power- density laser which melts and fuses metallic powders together. Three sets of stacks, provided with different hydraulic radii and internal geometries, have been produced.