Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 313, 2021
19th International Stirling Engine Conference (ISEC 2021)
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 04002 | |
Number of page(s) | 14 | |
Section | Novel Designs of Drive Mechanisms and Configurations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202131304002 | |
Published online | 22 October 2021 |
Experimental evaluation of piston motion modification to improve the thermodynamic power output of a low temperature gamma Stirling engine
University of Alberta, Mechanical Engineering Department, 9211 116 Street NW, Canada
* Corresponding author: dnobes@ualberta.ca
Stirling engines are a variety of heat engines which are capable of using heat from various sources including low temperature renewables. This work examines performance of a lab scale low temperature gamma type Stirling engine with a drive train modified with oval elliptical gears. The gears were added to dwell the engine piston motion to attempt to improve the thermodynamic performance of the engine by better replicating the ideal Stirling cycle. A variety of dwelling piston configurations were tested on both the displacer and power piston. It was observed that that the piston dwelling had the anticipated effect of changing the engine indicator diagrams to more closely resemble the ideal cycle, however there were no substantial improvements to maximum engine power. It was observed that dwelling the displacer piston caused substantial reductions to engine running speeds and resulted in maximum power being reduced. In the case of power piston dwelling the indicator diagram was enlarged and there were slight increases to maximum power production. Overall the added complexity of dwelled piston motion systems is not likely an advantageous method of increasing the power output of low temperature difference Stirling engines.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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