An Adiabatic Approach for the Design and the Response-to-Load Evaluation of Free-Piston Stirling Engines

In past studies, the authors presented a dynamic analysis for the design and the performance evaluation of free-piston Stirling engines both at nominal and at off-design conditions.

In this paper, the analysis is applied in conjunction with an adiabatic reference model, which, as compared with the classical isothermal assumption, can give a better representation of the engine thermodynamic behavior.

This new approach involves some mathematical difficulties whose overcoming is discussed in the paper, as well as the influence of the thermodynamic modelization on the engine dynamic stability.