Stirlingengineforum.com

On which platforms does your prog work? What about OS support?

The size of the opening should be mentioned in the drawing. This is "laminar flow" engine, which I think works by forming variable pressure nodes and antinodes inside the tube. I don't know enough about these engines to give you any detailed description or measurements, sorry. What do you ...

Umm... well to say at very least, I'm a little confused... Are you planning to use double-acting pistons? and If so, Why are you connecting the hot cylinders to cold cylinders of the same piston pair? I suggest It wouldn't work because of the cycles would be reversed, and partially cancel each other...

the tin can stirlings are very low-power, demonstrational engines only. This means that any friction slowing the mechanics down might cause it to stop. In your case I suspect the thick oil you are using. Other reasons might be timing, leaks and other than piston related mechanical issues...

well, the position of the pipe to the power cylinder ain't very critical since we are only interested to connect these two cylinders pneumatically. It is better to have it on the cold side though, to keep the air going into the power cylinder cool. A regenerator in this manifold might or might not i...

Stirling engines cannot be lubricated by oil. This is due to potential explosion danger and also the fact that oil will clog the regenerator and heat exchanger. The pistons of a really powerful engine are usually made of aluminum alloy for light weight, while having sliding piston rings made of self...

Well, got some maintenance done for the Gamma engine. I went to the machine shop, dismantled the engine, only to see that my displacer and hotcap had developed a rust problem (both been made of carbon steel, this wasn't a surprise). I had to re-polish the hotcap internals and the displacer, but i ac...

Hmm... What kind of cardboard did you use? If you just laminated (stacked) crinkled cardboard, then your displacer might be too porous. Try wrapping it in duct tape or similar to prevent air going in/out. This'll usually work

Well, first of all the ratio between the displacer swept volume to the power cylinder swept volume will determine the required temperature differential. the larger the displacer, the lower the difference needs to be to operate. (a rule of thumb) Then the stroke to diameter ratio of the power cylinde...

So if I understood what you were saying, there's no crank or rod or anything moving the displacer piston? The volume of the displacer piston should equal 2/3 of the swept volume of the displacer cylinder and it should equal 1,5 times the volume of the power cylinder... The crank mechanism moving the...

Hi! After an successfull prototype gamma stirling and some studying, My next project will be power producing engine for my house. I would be satisfied if it could produce some 5 KW of electrical power. The heat source would be the fireplace. The engine would be built inside the chimney, so the smoke...

There are engines that use rotary displacer, which really isn't much more than eccentricly assembled, hollow drum rotating in the displacer cylinder. It's weight is countered by the eccentric flywheel...

Umm... making a larger version out of the tin can concept is not enough. The only way to get the engine to produce enough power while having practical size (say 10kW) is to: 1) increase the working fluid pressure. powerfull commercial stirlings may have a operating pressure up to 200 bars (that's a ...

Polyacetal HAS larger thermal expansion ratio than brass or copper (which you guys seem to use a lot with walking beams). If your piston fits the cylinder snugly in the room temperature, operation temperature can make the piston stuck inside. I have solved the problem by having the power cylinder is...

Aluminium is a bad material for piston/cylinder assemblies. The problem of aluminium is its high friction ratio and high thermal expansion rate. I'm sorry to spoil your fun, but copper, brass or even some plastics would work better as a piston than aluminium. I personally chose polyacetal, but it se...