Experimental validations of a new thermoacoustic simulation software CRISTA

Abstract

A new simulation software CRISTA has been developed at LIMSI-CNRS. It is based on the Rott's equations approximation. It computes all thermal and acoustic parameters of a given thermoacoustic device whose geometry is previously designed with another program TADESIGN. To realize the simulation, the user needs only to define a drive ratio at some point of the system and the heat exchanger temperatures. Note that for a prime mover the hot heat exchanger temperature is a simulation result. Every converged solution guarantees the physical principles. Moreover, CRISTA allows computing the quality factor of the resonator. The experimental validations have been successfully performed on different devices coupled to the same prime mover: a simple RLC load, an acoustic amplifier, a pulse tube refrigerator and a lumped boost pulse tube refrigerator.

Design and dynamic behaviour of a cold storage system combined with a solar powered thermoacoustic refrigerator

“…Therefore, they are used only to conduct studies on some elements of the machines but they are too detailed to be able to simulate the behaviour of a complete system other long periods of time. Up to now, entire thermoacoustic machines have been designed and studied using computer codes such as DeltaEC (Design Environment for Lowamplitude ThermoAcoustic Energy Conversion) [22], DSTAR (Design Simulator for Thermoacoustic Research) [23] or CRISTA [24]. These computer programs solve the equations expressing the conservation of mass, momentum and energy with the assumptions of linear acoustics in 1D and in steady state regime.…”