The weirdest instrument you've ever heard about - Thermoacoustic Flute

 Hi there!

Today I want to show you an invention what I've made few weeks ago.

I call it:

 Thermo-Flute

The name is came from two words:

thermoacoustics / pan flute


The base of the experiment is very simple.

A standing wave thermoacoustic engine (also called Hofler tube).

This tube has no moving parts.

The tube works as a quarter wavelength resonator like the Sondhauss tube

but it has a cold and a hot heat exchangers and a stack regenerator between them.

The  strong temperature gradient across the stack regenerator creates a thermodinamic cycle 

of oscillating air that produce sound.

How do these Hofler tube generate sound? - demonstration from Naval postgraduate school


This small thermoacoustic sound source was invented by Professor Tom Hofler

around 2000.

The sound intensity changes with the temperature difference.

Higher temperature difference gives higher amplitude for the sound.

It means the engine could also make sound if the hot and cold heat exchangers changing place.

So we can also make a flute with deep freezing.


In my invention the resonator length could be variable quickly in time 

with opened tuned holes as the flute works.

My thermoacoustic flute has 5 notes only: E-D-C-A-G

This is a part of a mixolid - pentatonic scale if I'm right.

The engine has limits yet, and the ThermoFlute is a bit out of tune on the video

because the temperature changed a bit when I shoot this video,

but anyway this is the first working model what I've made 

and I need to develop it 

as a "just for fun" project in the future.


If you want to build your own Thermoacoustic Flute 

just follow my YOUTUBE channel, SUBSCRIBE and HIT THE BELL button to advice.

Here is the short video how I play on the world first thermoacoustic flute: