The Development And Optimization Of Liquid Piston Stirling Engines

Abstract

The liquid piston Stirling engine is an environmentally conscious technology developed to replace the electric heat pump and the gas furnace. Dr. Holtzapple's innovative modifications to existing Stirling engine technology has lead to promising results. Working engines based on this ''bounce chamber" modification have been built; however, they have exhibited poor performance. Rather than investing more funds in equipment modifications, it was decided that the system should first be modeled. This would hopefully provide great insight into what needed to be done to improve engine performance. A Visual Basic program was developed to model the engine. This graphically oriented program was designed specifically to give the user a clear understanding of how key engine parameters related to engine performance. A FORTRAN multidimensional global optimization program was also written because of the enormous computational requirements required for proper parameter optimization. Results to date show a nine fold increase in engine power. More trials are required before the engine parameters are fully optimized and trends are developed.