Power-Optimal Control of a Stirling Engine’s Frictional Piston Motion

Entropy

Karl Heinz Hoffmann¹  Robin Masser¹  Raphael Paul¹  Abdellah Khodja¹  Andreas Fischer¹ 

[1] Institut für Physik, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany;

关键词: piston motion optimization;    endoreversible thermodynamics;    Stirling engine;    irreversibility;    friction;    power;   

DOI  :  10.3390/e24030362

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The power output of Stirling engines can be optimized by several means. In this study, the focus is on potential performance improvements that can be achieved by optimizing the piston motion of an alpha-Stirling engine in the presence of dissipative processes, in particular mechanical friction. We use a low-effort endoreversible Stirling engine model, which allows for the incorporation of finite heat and mass transfer as well as the friction caused by the piston motion. Instead of performing a parameterization of the piston motion and optimizing these parameters, we here use an indirect iterative gradient method that is based on Pontryagin’s maximum principle. For the varying friction coefficient, the optimization results are compared to both, a harmonic piston motion and optimization results found in a previous study, where a parameterized piston motion had been used. Thus we show how much performance can be improved by using the more sophisticated and numerically more expensive iterative gradient method.

【 授权许可】

Unknown