Design and strength analysis of cylinder head for free-piston engine

A novel cylinder head, which is specially used in free-piston linear alternator (FPLA) with a passive intake valve system was designed in this paper. The finite element model of the cylinder head was built to analyze its strength and hardness with ANSYS. The thermal, mechanical and machinery-thermal coupling stresses were calculated with the model. The result indicates that it is available for the free piston engine and the maximum stress meets the requirements of the material strength in different conditions.