CFD Assisted Prediction of Hydrodynamic Parameters for Regenerator of Cryocooler

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is the emerging technique for analysis and performance prediction of a pulse tube refrigerator. The regenerator plays an important role in any cryorefrigerator, and hence to predict the realistic performance, proper boundary conditions are required in CFD tool. The modeling of regenerator requires appropriate definition and knowledge about hydrodynamic parameters viz. viscous resistance, inertial resistance and porosity. The present work report, CFD assisted prediction of hydrodynamic parameters for some widely used regenerator wire mesh structures selected on the basis of different porosity, which can predict the same pressure drop and friction factor obtained from experimental correlation equation. A unique value of viscous and inertial resistance is obtained iteratively for each mesh screen structures over a range of mass flow rate. These data can be readily used as boundary conditions for CFD simulations of the test section.