Stirling engine regenerator based on lattice structures manufactured by selective laser melting

Abstract

Lattice structures as new design concepts have been considered to manufacture a Stirling engine regenerator by SLM. Two unit-cell topologies have been selected, cubic and rhombic, and different strut dimensions have been designed in order to achieve a porosity of 70% approximately. As a baseline, a regenerator based on a volumetric woven wire mesh with similar porosity properties has been taken into account. Computational fluids dynamics have been employed to analyze heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics. In addition, these properties have been obtained experimentally for demonstrators built with the defined cellular lattice structures.