A SIMILARITY-BASED APPROACH TO THE OPTIMI ZATION OF REGENERATIVE GAS CYCLES .1. HEAT-EXCHANGERS

To optimize the design of regenerative gas cycles, such as the Stirlin g or the Vuilleumier cycle, a hierarchical approach is suggested, firs t selecting the fundamental parameters that refer to the whole cycle, e.g. the speed or the pressure, at the highest level. As the next step , the distribution of the temperature-related dead volume onto the var ious cycle components is optimized, leaving the determination of the o ptimum geometric parameters at constant dead volume for each of these as the remaining suboptimization problems at the lowest level. This fi rst part of the contribution deals with the optimization of tubular he at exchangers at constant volume. Using some simplifying assumptions, analytical solutions can be obtained for some cases, depending on the side conditions selected. These show a good agreement with the results of more complex numerical optimizations and thus appear well-suited t o provide initial values for these as well as to contribute to fundame ntal theoretical considerations.