Optimizing the Performance of a Heat Engine: a Simulation Study
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Date
2010-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
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
Description
Keywords
Heat Engine