Multi cylinder Stirling engine question.

[Martyn L]

Hello all,
I'm currently in the process of building an inverted V12 gamma Stirling engine and after months of trawling through the Internet have been unable to find any projects (working or not) that contain more than eight cylinders. I can't believe it hasn't been attempted before but seems odd there is no readily available information on such an engine.
If anyone has any knowledge or info on a multi cylinder Stirling greater than eight cylinders would be most appreciated.
Many thanks Martyn:)

[thanh-cuibap]

Hi Martyn L ...you check :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bBUETLTpcQ

[Martyn L]

Hi, thanks for the reply and the link. I do like this engine and it runs well. I think it's suffering a bit from frictional losses due to the belt it's driving. What I'm building is very similar but all the cylinders all act directly onto one crankshaft. Also it's 12 cylinder. Still struggling to find any info on a Stirling greater than eight cylinders.
Many thanks:)
Martyn L

[MikeB]

What info are you looking for? I'd have thought that the problems involved in building an eight cylinder engine are pretty much the same as for twelve cylinders, just with different angles. (And not necessarily then - sometimes multi-cylinder IC engine designs are merely two/three/four cylinder designs tacked end-to-end.)

[Martyn L]

Hi, yes I agree. Indeed I think if an eight cylinder Stirling engine is working then there should be no reason why you can't tack on a few more cylinders without it grinding to a holt. The info I'm looking for is not so much the technical details for the build of such an engine but more of an interest in looking at other people's projects and designs of multi cylinder Stirling's. surprising you don't see any V10's or V12's anywhere and if there are, I'd say they're quite rare :)
Cheers Martyn.