A Carnot heat engine is a hypothetical heat engine which works on the basis of reversible Carnot cycle. It is assumed as the most efficient heat cycle consisting of two isothermal and two adiabatic processes. This is the engine which could be operated at the maximum efficiency.
In the Carnot heat cycle there are four basic steps in the first step the engine absorbs heat and the gas begins to expand. In this step the temperature of the gas does not change and hence it is an isothermal process all the amount of heat energy is used to expand the gas only. In the second step the gas is still expanding but a cooling is being done so this type of process is called adiabatic expanding. In the third step the gas which is cooled in step two is now recompressed and heat goes to the heat sink. In this third stage there is a decrease in volume but an increase in the pressure of the gas however temperature still stays constant so this is an isothermal compression process. In the fourth step the gas cool gas is compressed again and its temperature goes back to the original temperature again a temperature change is observed so this is an adiabatic compression.
The Carnot engine is a simple heat engine concept, where the gas always stays in the cylinder just being heated and refrigerated.
I roughly reproduced this principle with Realflow, resulting in the gas actually pushing the piston out, and the inertia built by the wheel drives the piston back for a new cycle. The only cheat is the heating/freezing synchronization system which is a simple Python script. Modifying max heat temperature will then alter the speed of the engine, and this, is fun and compelling.
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