Cold wire constant voltage anemometry to measure temperature fluctuations and its application in a thermoacoustic system.

Abstract

The knowledge of temperature fluctuations is essential for most thermoacoustic systems. In the present paper, cold wire constant-voltage anemometry (CVA) to measure temperature fluctuations is presented. Corrections for the thermal inertia and for the end losses of the wire are applied during the post-processing. The correction for the thermal inertia of the cold wire is achieved by applying a time dependent thermal lag as proposed originally for a constant-current anemometry (CCA) system. This thermal lag is measured in parallel by a hot wire. The thermal end losses of the wires to their supports are also considered and approximate corrections are proposed. The procedure for the cold wire CVA is validated in the acoustic field of an acoustic resonator with wires of different lengths. A comparison between a CVA and a CCA measurement also confirms the CVA measurement. Furthermore, the proposed measurement procedure is applied close to the stack of a thermoacoustic refrigerator. Supposing a two-dimensional flow, the simultaneous measurement of velocity and temperature fluctuations is possible. This allows a detailed examination of the acoustic field close to the stack, including the study of the correlation between temperature and velocity.