Influence of temperature gradient on acoustic characteristic parameters of stack in TAE

Acoustic characteristic parameters, i.e. propagation constants, characteristic impedance, and transmission loss are used to describe acoustic characteristics of the stack in a thermo-acoustic engine. The transfer-matrix equations of the thermo-acoustic stack and additional stacks are established. Then the expressions of their important acoustic characteristic parameters are derived. Theoretical calculation results show that the imposed temperature gradients have an influence on the acoustic characteristic parameters of the two kinds of stacks. For additional stacks, due to no longitudinal temperature gradients, thermo-acoustic source α is zero. The expressions for the propagation constant and characteristic impedance are specialized to the thermo-acoustic stack. Theoretical calculation results of the acoustic characteristic parameters of the thermo-acoustic stack are presented to verify the application of the model built in this paper.