2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Acoustic Stirling engine: Novel development of Stirling engine

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23656141
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Thermal engineering
Research Institution	Tohoku University
Principal Investigator	BIWA Tetsushi 東北大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 教授 (50314034)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	スターリングエンジン / 熱音響学
Research Abstract	Objective of this study was to achieve a novel development on a Stirling engine technology by replacing oscillating solid pistons with oscillations of a gas column or with oscillations of a liquid column. The looped tube type thermoacoustic engine, which had been invented as a pistonless Stirling engine based on unstable oscillations of the gas column, was modified in this study by using a co-axial tube consisting of cylindrical tubes with different diameters. Also, in this study, a pistonless-Stirling engine was developed by using oscillation of a liquid column in a U tube. This type of the engine operates at significantly low frequency compared with that using oscillation of a gas column.