Numerical study of a VM type multi-bypass pulse tube cryocooler operating at 4K

Abstract

VM cryocooler is one kind of Stirling type cryocooler working at low frequency. At present, we have obtained the liquid helium temperature by using a two-stage VM/pulse tube hybrid cryocooler. As a new kind of 4K cryocooler, there are many aspects need to be studied and optimized in detail. In order to reducing the vibration and improving the stability of this cryocooler, a pulse tube cryocooler was designed to get rid of the displacer in the first stage. This paper presents a detail numerical investigation on this pulse tube cryocooler by using the SAGE software. The low temperature phase shifters were adopted in this cryocooler, which were low temperature gas reservoir, low temperature double-inlet and multi-bypass. After optimizing, the structure parameters and the best diameters of orifice, multi-bypass and double-inlet were obtained. With the pressure ratio of about 1.6 and operating frequency 2Hz, this cryocooler could supply above 40mW cooling power at 4.2K, and the total input power needs no more than 60W at 77K. Based on the highest efficiency of 77K high capacity cryocooler, the overall efficiency of this VM type pulse tube cryocooler is above 0.5% relative Carnot efficient.