The Stirling cycle uses an external heat source, which could be anything from gasoline to solar energy to the heat produced by decaying plants.

In this article, we'll learn about the Stirling cycle and see how two different configurations of this engine work.

Hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, or plain air is used in the Stirling cycle, providing the maximum number of options in environmentally friendly gases.

Travelling wave devices can be described using the Stirling cycle.

A Stirling cycle is like an Otto cycle, except that the adiabats are replaced by isotherms.

This machine was envisaged as a refrigerator (i.e., the reversed Stirling cycle).

The idealised Stirling cycle consists of four thermodynamic processes acting on the working fluid:

The Stirling cycle is a highly advanced subject that has defied analysis by many experts for over 190 years.

Most thermodynamics textbooks describe a highly simplified form of Stirling cycle consisting of four processes.

Ericsson eventually abandoned the open cycle in favor of the traditional closed Stirling cycle.