Novel Real-Time Acoustic Power Estimation for Dynamic Thermoacoustic Control

This paper presents a new procedure for the real-time processing and analysis of data from thermoacoustic systems. The approach focuses on continuously acquiring and adjusting measurements of acoustic wave pressure, enabling the instantaneous estimation of acoustic power. This is crucial for real-time control and decision-making, especially in applications that require rapid power estimation, such as the control loop implementation in thermoacoustic engines, where conditions are constantly changing and dynamic adaptation is essential. Two methods for estimating the power delivered to the load are proposed: (method 1) instantaneous power evaluation, which calculates the power consumed by the resistance in the resistance–capacitance (RC) load, and (method 2) one-period average power calculation using the well-established two-microphones method. These methods are validated with both different synthetic signals and experimental measurements. The results reveal that the new method provides real-time accurate estimations of the power delivered to the acoustic load and, thus, has shown potential for control-based applications.