Investigation of the acoustic field in a standing wave thermoacoustic refrigerator using time-resolved particule image velocimetry

In thermoacoustic devices, the full understanding of the heat transfer between the stack and the heat exchangers is a key issue to improve the global efficiency of these devices. The goal of this paper is to investigate the vortex structures, which appear at the stack plates extremities and may impact the heat transfer. Here, the aerodynamic field between a stack and a heat exchanger is characterised with a time-resolved particle image velocimetry (TR- PIV) set-up. Measurements are performed in a standing wave thermoacoustic refrigerator operating at a frequency of 200 Hz. The employed TR-PIV set-up offers the possibility to acquire 3000 instantaneous velocity fields at a frequency of 3125 Hz (15 instantaneous velocity fields per acoustic period). Measurements show that vortex shedding can occur at high pressure level, when a nonlinear acoustic regime preveals, leading to an additional heating generated by viscous dissipation in the gap between the stack and the heat exchangers and a loss of efficiency.