Tantalizingly cool piston?

[justin2929]

Has anyone considered the potential of the fluidic muscle for use in
Stirling applications?
It is very low friction, it has very high foot-pounds, it has more
force at a given pressure as it gets longer, its capable of very
fast cycle times, and it's hermetically sealed. In a word, itÂ’s cool.
https://xdki.festo.com/xdki/data/doc_en ... S_ENUS.PDF

[bptdude___2569]

Actually, yes.

There have been Stirling designs that use tubes of air, just capped, to store pressure like a spring. The regenerator works like a spring, though hard to explain. The pressure spring and the heat spring work together like a capacitor and inductor in an occilator. I am going on and on ...

Anyways, yes, about your cool device. Something that direcly attachs to the cylinder and uses the change in pressure to do direct external work is of interest. The reason is the simplicity.

They might even be used to provide performance feedback. Such as doing work to enhance the cool side or stoke the hot side, thus making them worth more than whatever loss they take up, which is not mentioned.

[stan.hornbaker]

Did you read the fine print?

"Judder-free Operation, • Completely jolt-free with extremely
slow movements"

"Mode of Operation, • Fluidic Muscle is a tensile actuator
which mimics natural muscular
movement.

Please explain how an extremely slow acting, tensile member can enhance the operation of any Stirling engine.

[justin2929]

Actually William, while you are correct in your reference that the fluidic muscle can move very slowly, this is simply one of its features. Did you notice where it is applied in a shaker application at speeds of 90 Hz? I think that this muscle could perhaps serve well as the power piston in a Bata configuration. Being sealed and very low friction (as well as high speed) could there be potential for very high-pressure beta Stirling. Using this muscle with an opposed spring, and an external electro magnet to move the displacer within its sealed piston? One thing that is important to note, the muscle actually gets stronger as it gets longer and weaker as it gets shorter in its overall length. Could this feature be useful, as in a Beta type, to take a little load off of the flywheel work as the gas is cooling and the muscle is growing? William, perhaps a re-reading through the PDF about this muscle wouldnÂ’t go amiss. J

[bptdude___2569]

Interesting concepts about using as power piston.

But, I still think its best quality is that it would react to the timing of the pressure of the Stirling, without using mechanical timing methods.