Engines, and particularly those incorporating the stirling cycle

Abstract

An engine other than an internal combustion engine, and preferably one incorporating the underlying philosophy of the Stirling hot gas engine, is physically arranged to both significantly reduce its size and weight relative to earlier designs as well as reduce fluid leakage into or out of the engine's gas enclosure. Size and weight reduction are achieved in several ways including that of moving this disclosure's counterpart to the Stirling crankshaft from outside the working-gas enclosure to inside the working-gas enclosure, or at least closer thereto than in existing designs. In several embodiments of the invention, this rearrangement simultaneously eliminates a major source of fluid leakage. In some designs of this disclosure, the Stirling working-gas enclosure, which consists of a power piston and cylinder, are replaced by a somewhat different appearing and thoroughly sealed working-gas enclosure that includes a bellows, this also assisting in reducing weight. The Stirling displacer piston has also been modified both to improve efficiency and thus reduce weight. In one configuration it houses this invention's counterpart to the conventional Stirling crankshaft, in another embodiment it is driven by and assisted in its principal function by a rotating cam element, and in all embodiments it can be modified to direct the entrapped gas along different paths or routes depending on whether it is moving toward the hot end of the gas enclosure or toward the other end.