Flywheel-based traveling-wave thermoacoustic engine

Motivated by the success of a traveling-wave thermoacoustic engine with a linear load, we built a thermoacoustic engine with a flywheel and a reciprocal piston. The engine has a looped tube with a regenerator and heat exchangers at the ends. When the temperature difference between the ends of the regenerator is increased above a threshold, the flywheel undergoes steady rotation. From simultaneous measurements of the pressure and velocity of the working gas, we demonstrated experimentally that this flywheel-based thermoacoustic engine is a kinematic Stirling engine.