Experimental and numerical flow investigation of Stirling engine regenerator

Costa, Sol-Carolina; Tutar, Mustafa; Barreno, Igor; Esnaola, Jon-Ander; Barrutia, Haritz; García, David; González, Miguel-Angel; Prieto, Jesús-Ignacio

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.

Citation

Costa, S.-C., Tutar, M., Barreno, I., Esnaola, J.-A., Barrutia, H., García, D., González, M.-A., & Prieto, J.-I. (2014). Experimental and numerical flow investigation of Stirling engine regenerator. Energy, 72, 800-812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.06.002

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 1, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jun 26, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014-08
• Deposit Date: Apr 24, 2024
• Journal: Energy
• Print ISSN: 0360-5442
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 72
• Pages: 800-812
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.06.002
• Keywords: Stirling engine regenerator, Test bench, Oscillating flow, Pressure drop, Thermal efficiency, Porous media
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3599883