Thermal management of thermoacoustic sound projectors using a free-standing carbon nanotube aerogel sheet as a heat source

摘要

Carbon nanotube (CNT) aerogel sheets produce smooth-spectra sound over a wide frequency range (1-10~5 Hz) by means of thermoacoustic (TA) sound generation. Protective encapsulation of CNT sheets in inert gases between rigid vibrating plates provides resonant features for the TA sound projector and attractive performance at needed low frequencies. Energy conversion efficiencies in air of 2% and 10% underwater, which can be enhanced by further increasing the modulation temperature. Using a developed method for accurate temperature measurements for the thin aerogel CNT sheets, heat dissipation processes, failure mechanisms, and associated power densities are investigated for encapsulated multilayered CNT TA heaters and related to the thermal diffusivity distance when sheet layers are separated. Resulting thermal management methods for high applied power are discussed and deployed to construct efficient and tunable underwater sound projector for operation at relatively low frequencies, 10 Hz-10 kHz. The optimal design of these TA projectors for high-power SONAR arrays is discussed.