Design, development and testing of coaxial pulse tube cryocooler and linear compressor

Abstract

Cryocoolers, particularly pulse tube cryocooler, is playing a pivotal role in research. Three most important components of cryocooler are, pulse tube, regenerator and linear compressor. Based on the relative position of regenerator and pulse tube we have various configurations like, inline, u-shaped, coaxial and annular. The most important component of a cryocooler is a pulse/pressure generator, called linear motor compressor. These compressors use a current carrying wire within a magnetic field to impart a linear force in the axial direction to the piston while conventional rotary compressors use a crankshaft to provide this force. Our area of interest is designing and developing a stirling type, split coaxial pulse tube and suitable linear compressor (moving coil type). The model used for preliminary design is isothermal. The design and fabrication was done in Walchand College of Engineering and testing was done in Cryogenics lab, IIT, Mumbai. The results in hand show lowest temperature achieved is 105.2 K.