A look at some air engine working cycles


1 The Stirling cycle


1 The Rider or Compression engine


1 The Ericsson cycle


1 The Ringbom cycle, named after the inventor Ossian Ringbom of Helsinki, Finland.



1 Free Piston engines


1 The Manson cycle.
A valved single piston/displacer engine so called after a design by A.D Manson published in Newnes Pratical Mechanics in 1952.

The design also appears in a patent granted in Germany to Michael Ruppel in 2000.
This patent describes two version of the engine