Study of coating effects on the performance of Stirling engine by non-ideal adiabatic thermodynamics modeling

Abstract

Nowadays, the Stirling engine is very important for its high efficiency, the usability of any types of the heat source, the quiet operation and the working fluid consistency within the engine. Hence, design engineers have always sought to improve the performance of this engine, using various processes and the optimization. In this article, the performance analysis of the Stirling engine has been performed by the non-ideal adiabatic thermodynamics model and was compared to the experimental results. In addition, the effect of coating on the regenerator and the influence of the coating type and the thickness were also investigated. Besides, a regression model was utilized for the sensitivity analysis. Ceramics coating included YSZ (Densed), YSZ (50% Porosity) and MgZrO 3, with 10 different thicknesses for each material. Obtained results showed that as the thickness of coating increased, the heat loss decreased and the efficiency enhanced. The results also indicated that by changing the coating type, the heat loss reduced and the efficiency enhanced due to decrease in the thermal conductivity coefficient in YSZ (50% Porosity) coating, as the optimum coating type. A good agreement was observed between theoretical and experimental results in the P–V curve and the relative error of the maximum power was observed 22.63%.

Keywords

• Coating effects
• Stirling engine
• Non-ideal adiabatic thermodynamics modeling
• Power
• Efficiency