Design of a Mini Thermo-Acoustic Refrigerator

This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A149093. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: A miniature thermoacoustic refrigerator is being developed for the purpose of cooling integrated circuits below their failure temperature when used in hot environments. The development of an electrically powered acoustic driver that powers the thermoacoustic refrigerator is described. The driver utilizes a flexural tri-laminar piezoelectric disk to generate one to two Watts of acoustic power at 4 kHz in 15 bar of He-Kr gas mixture. This thesis is the second of two driver development theses, which includes the information on the assembly of three drivers and their quantitative performance with a pressurized test resonator. A maximum acoustic power output of 0.5 Watt was achieved with the third driver.