A heat engine called a pulse tube engine has been recently proposed, which consists of only a few parts, namely, differentially heated stacked metal meshes in a cylinder and one piston, coupled to a flywheel. We built the prototype engine and tested its working mechanism from the standpoint of a thermoacoustic framework. We measured the work flux density distribution over the cross section of the pulse tube to elucidate the work source of the engine. This engine belongs to the standing wave engine group and the work source resides not in the stacked metal meshes but in the pulse tube.
Apart from double acting type engines, Stirling engines have either 2 pistons in 2 cylinders or 2 pistons in a single cylinder. Typically, the heater, regenerator and cooler are installed between the 2 pistons. The pulse tube engine, on the other hand, consists of a single piston in a single cylinder, a pulse tube, a heater, a regenerator, a cooler and a second cooler. For this paper, a simple prototype engine that uses air at normal atmospheric pressure as the working gas was fabricated. The oscillating velocity of the working gas in the pulse tube was measured using LDV, and the work flow emitting out of the pulse tube was observed. In addition, the effect of inserting heat storage material in the pulse tube on shaft power and indicated power was examined experimentally. A dramatic increase in the shaft power was achieved.
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