Function set 'adiabatic' - an Ideal Adiabatic simulation of a specific Stirling engine configuration

From the flow diagram below we see that four different systems are invoked to do an Ideal Adiabatic simulation. The main program sea ( s tirling e ngine a nalysis) first defines the system to be simulated in terms of the set of global variables set up by the define set of functions, as described previously. It then invokes function adiabatic which in turn invokes function set adiab to solve the set of differential equations (function dadiab ) over a number of cycles until convergence is attained. Function adiab then fills in the solution matrix for a complete cycle (function fillmatrix ) and displays various performance results (power, efficiency). Function adiabatic then invokes function plotadiab to display various relevant plots. The differential equation set is solved by using the Classical Fourth Order Runge-Kutta method which is which is described separately in a Technical Note on ordinary differential equations .

The dynamics of the solution algorithm lies in the function set adiab , which initializes the variables, invokes the Runge-Kutta function over a number of cycles, checks for cyclic convergence, then fills in the solution matrix. Notice that the function m-file volume.m includes the sinusoidal volume variations (function sinevol ), the Ross Yoke-drive volume variations (function yokevol ), and ( new - not in the above flow diagram ) the rockerV drive volume variations function rockvol ). The nine functions of the set adiabatic are included in the following seven m-files (refer to the diagram above): [ adiabatic.m , adiab.m , dadiab.m , rk4.m , volume.m , filmatrix.m and plotadiab.m ]. As before, these can be directly copied from this website and used in a system which has MATLAB installed. It is intended that the user will modify and augment this system as required for specific engine designs.

On to the case study - D-90 Ross Yoke-drive Engine

Stirling Cycle Machine Analysis by Israel Urieli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License