Overview of Advanced Stirling and Gas Turbine Engine Development Programs and Implications for Solar Thermal Electrical Applications

The DOE automotive advanced engine development projects managed by the NASA Lewis Research Center were described. These included one Stirling cycle engine development and two air Brayton cycle development. Other engine research activities included: (1) an air Brayton engine development sponsored by the Gas Research Institute, and (2) plans for development of a Stirling cycle engine for space use. Current and potential use of these various engines with solar parabolic dishes were discussed

Jay Carter Enterprises, Incorporated steam engine

The Small Community Solar Thermal Power Experiment (SCSE) selected an organic rankine cycle (ORC) engine driving a high speed permanent magnet alternator (PMA) as the baseline power conversion subsystem (PCS) design. The back-up conceptual PCS design is a steam engine driving an induction alternator delivering power directly to the grid. The development of the automotive reciprocating simple rankine cycle steam engine and how an engine of similar design might be incorporated into the SCSE is discussed. A description of the third generation automotive engine is included along with some preliminary test data. Tests were conducted with the third generation engine driving an induction alternator delivering power directly to the grid. The purpose of these tests is to further verify the effects of expander inlet temperature, input thermal power level, expansion ratio, and other parameters affecting engine performance to aid in the development of an SCSE PCS

Engine performance characteristics and evaluation of variation in the length of intake plenum

In the engine with multipoint fuel injection system using electronically controlled fuel injectors has an intake manifold in which only the air flows and, the fuel is injected into the intake valve. Since the intake manifolds transport mainly air, the supercharging effects of the variable length intake plenum will be different from carbureted engine. Engine tests have been carried out with the aim of constituting a base study to design a new variable length intake manifold plenum. The objective in this research is to study the engine performance characteristics and to evaluate the effects of the variation in the length of intake plenum. The engine test bed used for experimental work consists of a control panel, a hydraulic dynamometer and measurement instruments to measure the parameters of engine performance characteristics. The control panel is being used to perform administrative and management operating system. Besides that, the hydraulic dynamometer was used to measure the power of an engine by using a cell filled with liquid to increase its load. Thus, measurement instrument is provided in this test to measure the as brake torque, brake power, thermal efficiency and specific fuel consumption. The results showed that the variation in the plenum length causes an improvement on the engine performance characteristics especially on the fuel consumption at high load and low engine speeds which are put forward the system using for urban roads. From this experiment, it will show the behavior of engine performance

Cross Validation Of Neural Network Applications For Automatic New Topic Identification

There are recent studies in the literature on automatic topic-shift identification in Web search engine user sessions; however most of this work applied their topic-shift identification algorithms on data logs from a single search engine. The purpose of this study is to provide the cross-validation of an artificial neural network application to automatically identify topic changes in a web search engine user session by using data logs of different search engines for training and testing the neural network. Sample data logs from the Norwegian search engine FAST (currently owned by Overture) and Excite are used in this study. Findings of this study suggest that it could be possible to identify topic shifts and continuations successfully on a particular search engine user session using neural networks that are trained on a different search engine data log

Subatmospheric Brayton-cycle Engine Program Review

A solar energy powered electrical generator utilizing a Subatmospheric Brayton cycle engine is examined. The generator consists of a subatmospheric, Brayton-cycle engine and a permanent magnet (PM) alternator. The electrical power is generated by an alternator driven directly by the Brayton-cycle engine rotating group. Features that enhance reliability and performance include air foil bearings on both the Brayton-cycle engine rotating group and the PM alternator, an atmospheric-pressure solar receiver and gas-fired trim heater, and a high temperature recuperator. The subatmospheric Brayton-cycle engine design is based on that of the gas fired heat pump engine

Indicated mean-effective pressure instrument

An apparatus for measuring indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) of an internal combustion piston or rotary engine or of an external combustion engine such as a stirling engine is disclosed. An optical shaft encoder measures crankshaft angle of the engine. Changes in volume with respect to changes in crank angle of one or more cylinders (dV/d theta) is determined either empirically or algebraically from engine geometry and stored in a memory. As the crank angle changes, dV/d theta) is read from the memory and multiplied by chamber or cylinder pressure. The product (P dv/d theta) is then added to the total previously accumulated in the cycle. Each time theta changes by an amount equal to delta theta, the process is repeated. At the end of each engine cycle, the total is equal to the IMEP value for that cycle

Meta-heuristic algorithms in car engine design: a literature survey

Meta-heuristic algorithms are often inspired by natural phenomena, including the evolution of species in Darwinian natural selection theory, ant behaviors in biology, flock behaviors of some birds, and annealing in metallurgy. Due to their great potential in solving difficult optimization problems, meta-heuristic algorithms have found their way into automobile engine design. There are different optimization problems arising in different areas of car engine management including calibration, control system, fault diagnosis, and modeling. In this paper we review the state-of-the-art applications of different meta-heuristic algorithms in engine management systems. The review covers a wide range of research, including the application of meta-heuristic algorithms in engine calibration, optimizing engine control systems, engine fault diagnosis, and optimizing different parts of engines and modeling. The meta-heuristic algorithms reviewed in this paper include evolutionary algorithms, evolution strategy, evolutionary programming, genetic programming, differential evolution, estimation of distribution algorithm, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, memetic algorithms, and artificial immune system

Recursive least squares for online dynamic identification on gas turbine engines

Online identification for a gas turbine engine is vital for health monitoring and control decisions because the engine electronic control system uses the identified model to analyze the performance for optimization of fuel consumption, a response to the pilot command, as well as engine life protection. Since a gas turbine engine is a complex system and operating at variant working conditions, it behaves nonlinearly through different power transition levels and at different operating points. An adaptive approach is required to capture the dynamics of its performance

Gas turbine engine with convertible accessories

Drive means for connecting a gas turbine engine to its accessories are so constructed as to allow the accessories to be selectively positioned to any one of several predetermined circumferential positions about the perimeter of the engine. This feature permits convenient mounting of the same engine upon vehicles demanding radically different engine mounting arrangements

Main Engine Selection Optimization Analysis of the Ship Caraka Jaya III Based on Engineering and Economy Cosiderations

Caraka Jaya III, as sister ships, built in Indonesia in the era 1990, devided into three building phases. Each phase had the different main engine. Especially for the second phase used the MAN B&W 5S26MC as main engine. After several years later, some of the engines were going to have the problems, especially for the pistons and its rings. The selected engine was not the only one that should be used. In accordance with selection the engine, the optimization procrdure offer best solution as compromise. Selecting the main engine is a complicated and time consuming task. The application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), one of the Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), would promise a powerful tool for main engine selection as well as usual engineering design process. To select the candidate of the main engine it needs more criteria to obtain satisfactory solution. The criteria therefore are developed as pair wise coparison matrix leading to the mathematic solution. Analysis procedure is devided into three levels, namely, (1) criteria, (2) sub-criteria and (3) alternative of the selected engine. A consistency ratio needed as the acceptance criteria to check the solution of the pair wise comparison matrix. The final result obtained from multiplication of all matrixs on analysis, namely, SKL Diesel 8VD29/24AL- 0.149; MaK 9M20 – 0.190; Wartsila 9L20 – 0.088; Wartsila 6SW28 – 0.121; NIIGATA 8PA5L – 0.098; MAN B&W 5S26MC-0.354. According to the result, optimation solution will be MAN B&W 5S26MC or MaK 9M2