Pune, May 6, 2014

The Westin Pune Koregaon Park

Bangalore, May 09, 2014

ITC Gardenia

New Delhi, May 22, 2014

LeMeridian

Abstract for 2014 ANSYS Convergence Conference

Title of the Paper:
DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF THE PHOTOACOUSTIC GAS CELL FOR TRACE GAS DETECTION
Name of the Organization

Type of Physics

Industry

SAMEER, Mumbai

Structural Mechanics

Academic

Names of the Authors: Niyati Chelawat, Mayank Patni, Dr. Alok Verma
Email: niyati.chelawat17@gmail.com/ mayank.patni@ansys.com/ alok@sameer.gov.in
Abstract:
Trace gases make up less than 1% by volume of the earths atmosphere and it includes all gases
except Nitrogen and Oxygen. Several atmospheric trace gases are ozone, sulphur dioxide,
nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxides, carbon monoxide, methane, etc. At present, the ability to
detect small amounts of trace gases plays an important role in many real world applications.
Spectroscopy is the basic technique to detect amount of trace gases present in the atmosphere.
Photoacoustic spectroscopy can be used to detect very low concentrations quickly.
The photoacoustic spectroscopy is based on the excitation of molecules in a sample gas from the
ground state to the excited state by the infrared light. The decay of the excited molecules
generates heat variation which lead to pressure variation by thermal expansion. This gives rise to
an acoustic and thermal wave due to localized heating and expansion. This acoustic wave in the
photoacoustic cell is detected with microphones.
The design of photo-acoustic (PA) cell is really critical to get a very good signal to noise ratio. All
theoretical and experimental studies performed predict that for a constant light absorption, the
amplitude of the photoacoustic signal reaching the microphone depends on the size of the cell
and in general increases as cell dimensions are reduced. However, one must not minimize this to
a point that the acoustic signal produced at the sample suffers appreciable dissipation to the cell

Pune, May 6, 2014

The Westin Pune Koregaon Park

Bangalore, May 09, 2014

ITC Gardenia

New Delhi, May 22, 2014

LeMeridian

window and walls before reaching the microphone. Most importantly, the sample to be studied
plays a significant role when designing a photoacoustic cell.
A lot of research has been done by various scientists and they concluded that T-shape is the best
suitable geometry for photoacoustic gas cell. It consists of an optical absorbance cylinder and
centrically perpendicular to that an acoustical resonance cylinder. A microphone is mounted at
the end of the resonance cylinder to detect the sound signal or the acoustic wave. As the PA gas
cells are sparsely available, this gave rise to the need for its design and analysis. This is done
using ANSYS Acoustic module.
Using Acoustic ACT Extension, we were able to perform the simulation in Workbench interface
without the need of APDL commands.
First, the modal analysis is performed to determine frequencies and standing wave patterns
within a structure. Cylinder cells represent a perfect testing ground for the FE analysis, because
in this case the Eigen frequencies can be calculated analytically. Excellent agreement of
analytical and present FE results has been found. This confirms the reliability of the FE model
used for calculation of eigen modes of the T-cell, where no analytical results are available. Finite
element model of n-butane gas filled in the T-shape cell is developed and modal analysis is
performed. The present results with ANSYS matches very well with the available experimental
results.
Further, the sound pressure at the microphone location was detected by performing harmonic
analysis in ANSYS. The evaluated results found to be more accurate than that using COMSOL (as
given in literature).
This clearly demonstrates the better accuracy of ANSYS over COMSOL Multiphysics.