A Free-Piston Stirling Engine/Linear Alternator Controls and Load Interaction Test Facility

A test facility at NASA Lewis has been assembled for evaluating: free-piston Stirling engine/linear alternator control options, and interaction with various electrical loads. This facility is based on a “SPIKE” engine/alternator. The paper describes the engine/alternator, a multi-purpose load system, a digital computer based load and facility control, and a data acquisition system with both steady-periodic and transient capability.

Preliminary steady-periodic results are included for several operating modes of a digital AC parasitic load control. Preliminary results on the transient response to switching a resistive AC user load are discussed.