Optimal piston motion configuration for irreversible Otto cycle heat engine with maximum ecological function objective

Abstract

Applying optimal control theory and finite time thermodynamics, a practical Otto cycle heat engine with friction, pressure drop and heat transfer losses is studied. The maximum ecological function is taken as optimization objective, and the optimal piston motion configuration of the Otto cycle is obtained with the Newton’s heat transfer law between the working fluid and the environment. The fuel consumption and the total cycle time are fixed in the optimization. The optimal piston motion laws corresponding to the maximum ecological function configuration when the piston motion accelerations are unconstrained and constrained are obtained, respectively. By numerical examples, the piston motion optimal configurations under different optimization objectives and heat transfer laws are compared.

Keywords

• Finite time thermodynamics
• Irreversible Otto cycle heat engine
• Optimal configuration
• Ecological function
• Optimal control theory