Knowra Stirling engine Stirling engine A closed-cycle regenerative heat engine that converts temperature differences into mechanical work by cyclically compressing and expanding a working gas.
Stirling cycle : An idealized thermodynamic cycle with two isothermal and two constant-volume processes. It models the engine’s compression, heating, expansion, and cooling sequence.
Thermodynamics : The study of heat, work, energy, and the physical laws governing their transformations. It supplies the laws governing the engine’s heat input, work output, and efficiency.
Robert Stirling : A Scottish clergyman and engineer who patented the regenerative air engine in 1816. His patent introduced the engine design and its heat-saving economizer.
Cryocooler : A device that uses a thermodynamic cycle to produce temperatures below the surroundings. A reversed Stirling cycle uses work to pump heat rather than produce work.
Internal combustion engine : A heat engine in which fuel burns inside the working chamber or its flow path. Unlike a Stirling engine, it generates heat within the working gas rather than through an external heater.
Regenerator : A heat-storage device that absorbs heat from a working fluid and returns it later in the cycle. It stores heat between hot and cold parts of each cycle, improving efficiency.
Ideal gas law : The equation relating an ideal gas’s pressure, volume, temperature, and amount of substance. It connects the working gas’s changing temperature and volume to its pressure.
Stirling engine patent : Robert Stirling’s 1816 patent for an air engine using an internal heat economizer. It documents the original regenerative principle behind the engine’s name.
Free-piston Stirling engine : A Stirling engine whose pistons move without a crankshaft, often using flexures and a linear alternator. Its sealed, low-friction construction suits long-life power systems.
Steam engine : A heat engine that uses pressurized steam to produce mechanical work, typically through a piston or turbine. It also receives heat externally, but relies on water’s phase change rather than a sealed regenerative gas cycle.
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