Advanced Technology Development for Stirling Convertors

A high‐efficiency Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG) for use on potential NASA Space Science missions is being developed by the Department of Energy, Lockheed Martin, Stirling Technology Company, and NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC). These missions may include providing spacecraft onboard electric power for deep space missions or power for unmanned Mars rovers. GRC is also developing advanced technology for Stirling convertors, aimed at substantially improving the specific power and efficiency of the convertor and the overall power system. Performance and mass improvement goals have been established for second‐ and third‐generation Stirling radioisotope power systems. Multiple efforts are underway to achieve these goals, both in‐house at GRC and under various grants and contracts. The status and results to date for these efforts will be discussed in this paper. Cleveland State University (CSU) is developing a multi‐dimensional Stirling computational fluid dynamics code, capable of modeling complete con...