Tong Zheng¹, Lingen Chen^2,*, Fengrui Sun³ and Chih Wu⁴

^1,2,3 Faculty 306, Naval University of Engineering, Wuhan 430033, P. R. China.
⁴ Mechanical Engineering Department, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD21402, USA.
¹Fax: 0086-27-83638709; E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
^*To whom all correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 12 November 2002 / Accepted: 22 May 2003 / Published: 31 December 2003

Abstract: Based on a model of a two-heat-reservoir heat engine with a finite high-temperature source and bypass heat leak, the optimal configuration of the cycle is found for the fixed cycle period with another linear heat transfer law . The finite thermal capacity source without heat leak makes the configuration of the cycle to a class of generalized Carnot cycle. The configuration of the cycle with heat leak and finite thermal capacity source is different from others.

Keywords: finite time thermodynamics; heat engine; optimal configuration.