Browsing by Author "Bayou, Mehari"

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    Optimizing the Performance of a Heat Engine: a Simulation Study
    (Addis Ababa University, 2010-12) Bayou, Mehari; Bekele, Mulugeta (PhD)
    We performed a simulation study of a simple heat engine as it undergoes Carnot-type cyclic motion in a finite time over a wide range of piston speeds. There exists a specific piston speed at which the power delivered by the engine is maximum (Pmax) and its corresponding efficiency is larger than half of the Carnot efficiency ( 1 2 c). An optimization criterion leads to a trade-off between high power and high efficiency with respective values of 0.84Pmax and 0.81 c. In addition, we found the time taken at the optimized state to be 1.67 times the time taken when operating at maximum power