Thermoacoustic Refrigerator
An acoustic pressure-driven heat pump.
| Where | IEEE-HKN project team, UC San Diego |
|---|---|
| When | 2026 |
| Role | Project lead, three-person team, $500 budget |
| Tools | ANSYS Fluent, Onshape, 3D printing |
| Outcome | Steady-state 4°C drop at 1100 Hz |
A standing wave in a sealed tube drives a pressure gradient across a stack, moving heat with no moving parts and no refrigerant, basically a classic refrigerator cycle that uses standing waves as the compressor. I led a three-person IEEE-HKN team to build one from scratch.
Critically, the driver (speaker) has to run at a frequency that puts the heat exchanger’s stack at the right point(s) in the wave. I modelled a pressure impulse in ANSYS Fluent and measured the time between simulated pressure peaks at the endcap to find the resonator’s natural frequency, around 370 Hz. Our stack was staged at the third harmonic, putting the operating frequency near 1100 Hz.
I developed the structural assembly in Onshape and manufactured our prototype. It reached a steady-state drop of 4°C at 1100 Hz — enough to validate the node placement, with the remaining gap down to thermal conduction and sealing losses. Advised by Professor Prabhakar Bandaru and Christopher Fitzhugh.