The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Performance of the stirling cycle thermal regenerator
Author:	Cravo, Cesar A.
View Online:	njit-etd1993-074 (viii, 62 pages ~ 2.1 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Mechanical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Dave, Rajesh N. (Committee chair) Harnoy, Avraham (Committee member) Chen, Rong-Yaw (Committee member)
Date:	1993-10
Keywords:	Heat regenerators Heat exchangers
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Most of the methods developed to analyze the performance of regenerators make assumptions which are not valid in Stirling cycle regenerators. To more adequately describe the conditions of an actual Stirling cycle regenerator a more complex method has been investigated. This method takes into account the time dependence of the mass flow and pressure fluctuations and considers the temperature dependence of the thermophysical properties. The solution is accomplished by finite difference techniques. The solution determines the temperature distributions of the gas and matrix along the length of the regenerator and calculates the effectiveness over a cycle. A wide range of parameters can be varied in the analysis including pressure, mass flow rate, speed of operation and size. In general it was found that the effectiveness decreased with an increase in the mass flow rate but increased with an increase in the speed of operation. Variations in the pressure and phase angle had little influence on the effectiveness. An increase in the matrix size resulted in an increase in the effectiveness of the regenerator.