[HN Gopher] Stirling Cycle Machine Analysis
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       Stirling Cycle Machine Analysis
        
       Author : akshatjiwan
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2026-01-18 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ohioopen.library.ohio.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ohioopen.library.ohio.edu)
        
       | jacquesm wrote:
       | Nice to see this posted. I spent probably too much time on
       | Stirling engines and associated stuff (heat engines in general,
       | the Vuilleumier family of devices and other interesting bits &
       | pieces).
       | 
       | It's _so_ tempting, you think there has to be a way to make it
       | work. But I haven 't found one yet and I more or less gave up on
       | it. The most practical ones that I'm aware of are in spacecraft
       | for extreme cooling and in a commercially available generator.
       | 
       | If you've never seen one up close I highly recommend building a
       | model of one and watching it run, it is complete magic compared
       | to internal combustion engines which tend to be noisy and dirty.
       | Stirling engines run so quiet you have to be right up close to
       | realize it is running at all (and even then you probably will
       | subconsciously put your hand on it to verify that it is not just
       | your imagination).
       | 
       | The Philips company, when it still meant something, put together
       | a whole slew of pilots: a boat and a bus, and an endless number
       | of them in the lab. Fortunes have been sunk in these and with
       | preciously little to show for it other than an extreme
       | appreciation for how hard it is to make a really good seal.
       | 
       | Wurm et al's book is the standard in the field, it is very
       | thorough and gives a very good grounding in the theory as well as
       | some appreciation on why this is both a tempting and very hard
       | subject at the same time. Most engines are hard to think of and
       | relatively easy to engineer once you've thought of them. There
       | are two exceptions, Stirling engines and Wankel engines and both
       | have very strongly related problems. Solve the seal issue and the
       | world will pave the way to your door with gold.
        
         | defrost wrote:
         | The first working model engine I ever had (still have, in
         | parts, in a crate somewhere) was a compact stirling engine,
         | roughly 10 x 5 cm at the base, fantastic gadget for a single
         | digit year old child.
         | 
         | IIRC there's a New Zealand company WhisperGen(?) that use them
         | for power from waste heat from water heaters ...
         | 
         | Checking now, they seem to be used as marine power generation
         | these days, I can't find the original site from 15+ years ago.
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-18 23:00 UTC)