When I personally hear the term ‘engine’ I think of the crisp tunes of a Ferrari motor rumbling down ocean drive in Miami, or the V-12 motor of an Aston martin. However, these lovely sounds did not just happen because someone had an ahh-haa moment. These high displacing motors are the sons, or grandsons of the steam engine and the stirling engine. The stirling engine being my personal favorite (not only because I was asked to blog about it for class), but because of its innovation and ability to literally take the steam out of steam engines and create a new way of powering everything from submarines, children toys, auxiliary power generators for yachts or even fans.
The Stirling engine is best described by G. Walker (1980), as a “heat engine operated by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas at different temperature levels such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work”, the key principle for the stirling engine is that “a fixed amount of gas is sealed inside the engine”. (1) This leads to the stirling engine having the capacity of being more efficient than a gasoline or diesel engine. While this is impressive, the most impressive fact I have found about the stirling engine is that it is a renewable form of energy. The “stirling engine can run directly on just about any available heat source” (1). A major contributor to the stirling becoming a successful form of power is it took away a lot of danger that was involved with operating a steam engine, but it also was more efficient than its steam competitor. (2)
While each great invention has its day, the stirling engines ‘golden time’ was faded out by the late 1930s, and was largely forgotten and taken over by those largely popular electric and combustion motors. Moreover, the Stirling engine was a great stepping-stone for these new engines as it showed that creating a quite and functional motor was possibly. (3) The Stirling motor will not be an engine forgotten anytime soon, and when you think it is forgotten, look at the submarines taking the U.S Navy seals underwater, and you are sure to find one powering many different instruments on board.
Works Cited:
1)http://www.stirlingengine.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=514&start=60