Study on a high capacity two-stage free piston Stirling cryocooler working around 30 K

Abstract

This paper presents a two-stage high-capacity free-piston Stirling cryocooler driven by a linear compressor to meet the requirement of the high temperature superconductor (HTS) motor applications. The cryocooler system comprises a single piston linear compressor, a two-stage free piston Stirling cryocooler and a passive oscillator. A single stepped displacer configuration was adopted. A numerical model based on the thermoacoustic theory was used to optimize the system operating and structure parameters. Distributions of pressure wave, phase differences between the pressure wave and the volume flow rate and different energy flows are presented for a better understanding of the system. Some characterizing experimental results are presented. Thus far, the cryocooler has reached a lowest cold-head temperature of 27.6K and achieved a cooling power of 78W at 40K with an input electric power of 3.2kW, which indicates a relative Carnot efficiency of 14.8%. When the cold-head temperature increased to 77K, the cooling power reached 284W with a relative Carnot efficiency of 25.9%. The influences of different parameters such as mean pressure, input electric power and cold-head temperature are also investigated.