Experimental and numerical flow investigation of Stirling engine regenerator

Costa Pereira, Carolina, Tutar, Mustafa, Barreno, Igor, Esnaola, Jon-Ander, Barrutia, Haritz, García, David, González, Miguel-Angel and Prieto, Jesús-Ignacio (2014) Experimental and numerical flow investigation of Stirling engine regenerator. Energy, 72. pp. 800-812. ISSN 0360-5442

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Abstract

This paper presents both preliminary experimental and numerical studies of pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics of Stirling engine regenerators. A test bench is designed and manufactured for testing different regenerators under oscillating flow conditions, while three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulations are performed to numerically characterize the pressure drop phenomena through a wound woven wire matrix regenerator under different porosity and flow boundary conditions.

The test bench operating condition range is initially determined based on the performance of the commercial, well-known Stirling engine called WhisperGen™. This oscillating flow test bench is essentially a symmetrical design, which allows two regenerator samples to be tested simultaneously under the same inflow conditions. The oscillating flow is generated by means of a linear motor which moves a piston in an oscillatory motion. Both the frequency and the stroke of the piston are modified to achieve different test conditions.

In the numerical study, use of a FVM (finite volume method) based CFD (computational fluid dynamics) approach for different configurations of small volume matrices leads to a derivation of a two-coefficient based friction factor correlation equation, which could be later implemented in an equivalent porous media with a confidence for future regenerator flow and heat transfer analysis.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Stirling engine regenerator; Test bench; Oscillating flow; Pressure drop; Thermal efficiency; Porous media
Subjects:	H300 Mechanical Engineering
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Mechanical and Construction Engineering
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	19 Sep 2018 16:05
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2019 19:15
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/35791

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