"Stirling V4 Engine 1 " Steampunk Ringbom Hot Air Engine

Machine nr 15, 'V4 Engine'.
more info http://stirling.devink.net

Engine no 15, 'V4 Engine'

This is an eight-cylinder V4 engine that consists of four Ringbom engines, with the power cylinders arranged in a V.

The engine is composed of a big pillar that supports the flywheel, the cooling plates, the displacers and the power cylinders.
This was done to make it as slender as possible and I enjoyed putting this tree structure into practice.

This Ringbom engine also has a steel spring to keep the weight of the displacer as low as possible. In this way the displacer can oscillate under the change of air pressure in the power piston. If the engine has warmed up sufficiently it can also run on two Ringbom engines with the other two decompressed.

The number of strokes per minute of this machine is between 100 and 300. The advantage of this machine is that every engine is self-regulating. I get the impression that the engine starts to produce its power when the displacer and the power piston have shifted approx. 90°.
At that position it is also noticeable that the movement of the displacer rods reacts strongly to the temperature of the heat source and the speed of the flywheel.
At high flywheel speeds the movements of the displacer seem to be small (minimal exchanges of cold and hot air), but if the engine is loaded and the flywheel turns slowly we observe a bigger movement of the displacer rods (more exchange of cold and hot air), and gradually the engine runs faster. Something to observe for hours!

The challenge for me was the construction of the tree structure. It shows that it is possible to run a machne with a number of Ringbom engines in it.

I called this engine the V4 because the design reminds us strongly of the internal combustion engines of the contemporary means of transport.

This engine should also be regarded as an art object, for which the movement of the rods, crank and springs of the displacers is essential.