A Hemispherical-Involute Cavity Receiver for Stirling Engine Powered by a Xenon Arc Solar Simulator

We develop a solar simulator composed of multiple xenon arc lamps combined with a faceted paraboloidal dish concentrator to drive a Stirling engine in our laboratory for all-weather indoor testing. Experiments and numerical analysis are performed to determine the radiation flux and temperature distributions on the solar receiver surface. Based on the theoretical results, we present a receiver design for a solar Stirling engine with involute tubes closely conforming to the imaginary hemisphere to obtain a substantially uniform temperature field and a high solar-thermal efficiency of 67.1%.