Effect of induced pressure fluctuation in reservoir of a pulse tube cryocooler

Abstract

Pulse Tube Cryocoolers are used extensively in aerospace applications, environmental studies, and medical applications. It has several advantages of which some are very low vibration and long life. The performance of Pulse tube cryocooler can be enhanced by using a combination of inertance tube and reservoir. For practical applications the pulse tube cryocooler should be compact in size. This could be achieved by reducing the volume of the reservoir. This paper analyses the feasibility of introducing a reverse fluctuation inside the reservoir to minimize reservoir volume. Reverse fluctuation could be introduced by using the back volume of hermetically sealed linear compressor. To ascertain the same a numerical model was developed and simulated using Ansys Fluent. The effect of pressure variation in the reservoir and its equivalent performance was also simulated. The results suggest that the use of bounce space has a better results at lower volume and equivalent performance on increasing volume when compared to the cryocooler with reservoir.