Important Stirling engine book "Thermoacoustics" by Swift

[Brent]

Once in a while a new book comes along that changes your perspective,
and after that you'll never see things the same way again.
"Thermoacoustics a Unifying Perspective for Some Engines and
Refrigerators" by G.W. Swift is such a book.


As you may or may not know, it is possible to build thermoacoustic
Stirling cycle heat engines that have either no moving parts, or
perhaps as few as one moving part. Dr. Swift has been doing research
on engines like this at Los Alamos National Laboratory for some time
it is already beginning to pay off.
Engines with zero moving parts, or very few moving parts are currently
in industrial use to liquefy gases. This is being done today, it is
not something that might happen in the future. Some of these devices
are called pulse tube refrigerators.


However thermoacoustic Stirling engines can be built for many more
applications than just cryo cooling. For example here's how you could
build a Stirling/Stirling refrigeration system with zero moving parts.
First fabricate a thermoacoustic Stirling heat engine. The output
power of this engine will not be a spinning mechanical shaft, it will
be a fluctuating acoustic pressure.


We are all familiar with the fact that if you plug a cord for a radio
into a household electrical outlet, the radio will be getting its
power from a voltage source that vibrates back and forth.
We are not as familiar with the fact that it's also possible to build
mechanical devices like refrigerators that receive their power from an
oscillating pressure source of a gas like air. It's possible to build
refrigerators that are powered by air pressure fluctuations. These
can also be thermoacoustic Stirling refrigerators that are powered by
thermoacoustic Stirling heat engines.


The total moving parts count on engines that are configured like this
can be as low as zero! This new understanding should make possible
many interesting and different products that were impossible to
economically build before now.



Perhaps the most important contribution of this book is to remind
everyone who is developing a closed cycle engine like a Stirling
engine or any other closed cycle engine that acoustic effects within
these machines are NOT trivial and cannot be dismissed as unimportant.

Almost none of the Stirling engine that have been developed in the last 50 years were designed by engineers who were thinking about the acoustic effects
within their engines. Acoustics has been almost completely ignored in
Stirling engine design. It's a little bit like ignoring the elephant
in the room. If you ignore it, things won't work well.



This book is a university engineering textbook that is written by a
research scientist for other scientists and engineers. As such it is
not an easy book to read.



However it is extremely important that you obtain the knowledge in
this book before you design a new Stirling engine of almost any
configuration. The one exception where acoustics is probably not the
important would be for engines designed to turn less than 60 rpm.



If you aren't already an engineer when you start to read this book,
you will become a pretty good engineer by the time you are done with
the book. That assumes of course that you have taken the time and
effort to read the book with understanding.

This book also comes with animations written in DOS so you need to
make sure to your computer will allow you to display these animations.



This book is available either as a PDF download or a hardcover book.
you can download the PDF version
here:



This book is extremely important for anyone who wants to build a power
producing Stirling engine.

[Brent]

If the link above doesn't work. Here's a link that should work:





Thermoacoustics by Swift