Abstract
Thermo-acoustic cooling as an environmentally friendly refrigeration system is one of the research areas being
pursued. Although not commercially available and simple to fabricate, the designing of thermo-acoustic coolers
involves significant technical challenges. Many fundamental issues related to the thermo-acoustic effects and
the associated heat transfer must be addressed. The most inhibiting characteristic of current thermo-acoustic
cooling devices is the lack of efficiency. The stack has been identified as the heart of the device where the heat
transfer takes place. Improving its performance will make thermo-acoustic technology more attractive. Most
of the existing efforts have not taken thermal losses to the surroundings into account in the derivation of the
models. Five different parameters describing the stack geometry and the angular frequency of the standing
wave are considered. This work explores the use of a multi-objective optimization approach to model and to
optimize the performance of a simple thermo-acoustic engine. The present study highlights the importance of
thermal losses in the modelling of small-scale thermo-acoustic engines using a multi-objective approach. The
unique characteristic of this research is the computing of all efficient optimal solutions describing the best
geometrical configuration of thermo-acoustic engines.