The book presents the behavior of thermally and mechanically induced acoustic waves and the interaction of these pressure waves with flow fields. The study focuses on two important effects of the acoustic-fluid dynamic interactions. These effects are termed as thermoacoustic convection'' and acoustic streaming'' and are analyzed using computational fluid dynamics and experimental techniques. Thermoacoustic convection and acoustic streaming constitute an example of nonzero mean oscillatory flows in compressible media. The short and long time behavior of pressure waves induced by rapid heating in compressible gas-filled two-dimensional enclosures was numerically simulated first. The interactions of mechanically driven acoustic waves and associated primary oscillatory and secondary steady flows within a viscous fluid were studied next. The book should help shed some light on the physics of acoustically or thermally induced nonzero mean oscillatory flows and should be useful to professionals in heat transfer and fluids area, or anyone else who may be considering employing nonzero mean oscillatory flows in heat removal applications.

Murat Aktas received his Ph.D. degree in 2004 from Drexel University. He served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Villanova University. He joined TOBB University of Economics and Technology in 2005, where he is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research area is convective heat transport in gases and liquids.