JOURNAL OF PHYSICS D-APPLIED PHYSICS, vol.30, no.20, pp.2841-2847, 1997 (SCI-Expanded)
The power optimization of an endoreversible heat engine has been performed, and design characteristics have been described at maximum-power conditions. A technologically important example defined as heat exchange by combined radiation and convection has been considered. The analysis shows that the maximum power output of the heat engine is sensitive to the temperature, small values of the ratio of convective heat transfer coefficients of hot to cold ends and small values of the emittance ratio of heat source to heat sink. By considering the output power, tau, beta(C) and epsilon(R) must be held around 0.2, 0.01 and 0.0125 for optimum design considerations, respectively.