These are thermoacoustic animations for the PC written by Greg Swift (swift@lanl.gov) as compiled QuickBasic programs. Be sure to read the text file associated with each animation so that you will be able to interpret what you see on the screen.

To obtain a complete set of the animations Oscwall, Viscous, Wave, Thermal, PTR, TADOPTR, Meanflow, Standing, and TASHE, including clickable Win-95, Win-98, and Win-2K icons, download and extract the archive AnZip.exe.

To obtain the animation TasheOptr, which describes the physics behind the "500 gallon/day" thermoacoustic natural-gas liquefier, whose final status is described here, download and extract the archive TasheOpZ.exe.

To obtain the animation MixSep, which describes the physics behind thermoacoustic mixture separation, download and extract the archive MixSepZip.exe.

Note that some Windows-2000 systems require use of the *W2k.pif shortcuts provided here to start the animations, but other Windows-2000 systems allow the user to click on the DOS executables *.exe directly.

Beginning in 2005, we have had reports that some Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems will not run the animations at all. In one case, the Microsoft Antispyware application was causing anything that started as a DOS application to abort and pop up a dialog that scrolled away too fast to read. This can be avoided by opening a DOS CMD window from the Start button (Programs, accessories, commandprompt), changing directories (cd) to where the animations are, and typing the name of the desired animation file. In another case, the file Autoexec.nt was missing from C:\Windows\System32\.

Many requests have been made to make these animations available in alternate formats (Quicktime, MPEG, etc.), but we have not yet made the transition to a platform-independent software package that preserves the interactive format. Meanwhile, part of TASHE.EXE, one of the more complicated animations, has been encoded with narration, and it is available here in RealMedia format.

If you have come to this page seeking the slightly different set of animations that go with the book Thermoacoustics: A unifying perspective for some engines and refrigerators, go instead to Thermoacoustics Textbook