Abstract
The Stirling engine is an external combustion engine that uses heat exchangers to enhance the addition and removal of energy. This makes the engine power-dense but expensive, less efficient and complicated. In this contribution, the Stirling engine based on the Franchot engine has novel cylindrical fins working as isothermalizers to improve heat transfer without the complications of heat exchangers. Enhancing the power density by isothermalizing work spaces is compared to the bare cylinder optimized by varying the phase angle. The theoretical analysis shows that both the adiabatic and isothermal fins increase the power and efficiency, achieving the Curzon and Ahlborn efficiency at the maximum power point. In comparison to the phase angle method, the finned engine resulted in much lower gas mass flow rate, which leads to a reduction in the regenerator pumping and enthalpy losses. Thus, the Stirling engine has the potential to be simple, cheap, efficient and power-dense, and thus can be used effectively for different applications.
Highlights
In internal combustion engines, air and fuel are mixed and burned inside the working cylinders and the temperature of the mixture rises very fast
Performance investigations are done for both the bare and finned Franchot engine taking into account the gas friction in the compression and expansion cylinders
It is shown that the gas friction losses in the compression and expansion spaces can be ignored for short strokes at the maximum power point
Summary
Air and fuel are mixed and burned inside the working cylinders and the temperature of the mixture rises very fast. The exhausted gas is discharged to the atmosphere requiring no heat exchanger. Stirling engines exchange the heat with the working gas through finite surfaces, which limits the heat transfer. Many techniques have been used to increase the heat transfer and are classified as follows
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