Abstract
A fundamental study on a free-piston Stirling engine with a linear alternator for future space applications has been performed in the National Aerospace Laboratory. Many types of simulation code for a Stirling engine have been developed until now, but there is few analysis model which can be used for the design and development of a free-piston engine with a linear alternator. Therefore, a simulation method, which can calculate performance characteristics of free-piston engines, has been developed. It is a feature that the alternator analytical model is able to estimate alternator loss including the iron loss. The thermodynamic model of the engine is based on the isothermal model. This code is not complicated and easy to apply other engines. The calculated values of engine output power were greater than experimental data. However, the tendency agrees well with the experimental result.
