Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
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Regenerator Analysis with Finite Elements

Rauno Holopainen and Eero-Matti Salonen

The classic one-dimensional regenerator problem has been solved numerically in a new way. Instead of marching in time, the hot and cold periods are treated as boundary value problems in rectangular domains. To solve the boundary value problems, a space-time finite element method using the commercial package COMSOL 4.3 with MATLAB with a Galerkin formulation has been applied. This approach minimizes the coding effort. The code solves a problem automatically with three consecutive meshes of increasing densities. We present results of three example cases in some detail.