Improve the Free-Piston Stirling Engine Design with High Order Analysis Method

Abstract

Stirling engine is a heat engine which is enclosed a fixed quantity of permanently gaseous fluid as the working fluid. The free-piston Stirling engine is noted for its high efficiency, quiet operation, long life without maintenance in ten years and the ease with which it can use almost any heat source. Stirling cycle analysis method has been successfully applied to improve the free-piston Stirling engine design by its step-by-step development on order. This study presents the development and application of Stirling cycle analysis method. Discussions about use of multi-dimension CFD software simulating free piston Stirling engine when there’s not any available experimental data for its design will provide. Since it needs less computing resource and time to get 1D simulation results with some accuracy, the application of multi-dimension CFD could be very helpful to improve accuracy of 1D result with the details of the different simplified model parameters used in 1D model. The research demonstrates that with the combination of high order Stirling cycle analysis method, the design of the free-piston Stirling engine with the aid of numerical method could be much more effectively and accurately.