ABSTRACT
Much of the actual scale Stirling regenerator research work reported here was done under contract (Ibrahim et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2004c) with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). That joint effort was carried out via principal investigators at Cleveland State University (the lead), the University of Minnesota, and Gedeon Associates (Athens, Ohio); National Aeronautics and Space Administration Glenn Research Center (NASA GRC) participated via a Space Act Agreement with DOE. The principle investigators worked with three Stirling-engine development companies over the course of the research: Stirling Technology Co. (STC) (now InŽnia Corporation, Kennewick, Washington), Sunpower Inc. (Athens, Ohio), and Global Cooling Manufacturing, Inc. (Global Cooling, Athens, Ohio). These companies helped identify the important issues they faced concerning the regenerator and provided speciŽc engine parameters required to design the experiments. They also assisted with fabrication and testing of actualsize regenerator test samples. Once the DOE regenerator research effort was completed, this work was continued for several more years under NASA grant funding. The latest NASA/Sunpower oscillating-¨ow test-rig results were reported in Ibrahim et al. (2009a, 2009b). Some of those results are also included in this chapter.
