Design and Fabrication of Miniature Thermoacoustic Cooler for Electric Boards

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current research focuses on the design and fabrication of an efficient miniature thermoacoustic cooler capable of producing sufficient cooling power to cool electric boards. In theory, it was aimed that the thermoacoustic cooler was assigned to achieve 30 - 50 W of cooling power at a temperature difference of 25°C between the cold and the ambient sides. The first part of the research deals with how the loudspeaker is coupled with a travelling wave thermoacoustic cooler. This includes analyzing the equations that govern the dynamic behavior of the loudspeaker, which leads to achieving the appropriate acoustic conditions for the optimum performance of the cooler. A series of DeltaEC simulations were performed to verify the possible acoustic network configurations to meet the required acoustic conditions of the used ordinary loudspeaker. As for the second part, it deals with the geometry of the experimental apparatus. The fabricated travelling-wave thermoacoustic cooler operates by frequency of 95Hz (practically optimal) and uses helium gas at 1bar of gauge pressure. The experimental apparatus achieved a maximum temperature difference of 5.7°C (between the ambient/hot and cold ends when no cooling load was applied) and 1°C (at maximum cooling power of 37W).