Rudolph Vuilleumier (nonfiction)

Rudolph Vuilleumier was an engineer and inventor.

Vuilleumier is known for the Vuilleumier cycle, a thermodynamic cycle with applications in low-temperature cooling.

Biography

Vuilleumier was born in 1870 in Basel, Switzerland. He emigrated to the United States of America.

He worked as chief engineer at Safety Car Heating and Lighting Co. in New York.

Vuilleumier discovered and the Vuilleumier thermodynamic cycle, and patented related equipment. In some respects it resembles a Stirling cycle or engine, although it has two "displacers" with a mechanical linkage connecting them as compared to one in the Stirling cycle. The hot displacer is larger than the cold displacer. The coupling maintains the appropriate phase difference. The displacers do no work—they are not pistons. Thus no work is required in an ideal case to operate the cycle. In reality friction and other losses mean that some work is required.

In the last 20 years of his life he lived at New Rochelle, north of New York, address mentioned on the 1918 patent.

Vuilleumier died of pneumonia on May 12th 1920 at New Rochelle, not having the chance to take advantage of his invention.

Fiction cross-reference

• Crimes against physical constants
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Mathematician (nonfiction)
• Mathematics (nonfiction)
• Vuilleumier cycle (nonfiction) - a thermodynamic cycle with applications in low-temperature cooling.

External links

• Physico-mathematical Models Of The Vuilleumier Machine by Adrian Homutescu, Vlad Mario Homutescu, Condrat Adrian Homutescu