Study on the flow nonuniformity in a high capacity Stirling pulse tube cryocooler

High capacity Stirling-type pulse tube cryocoolers (SPTC) have promising applications in high temperature superconductive motor and gas liquefaction. However, with the increase of cooling capacity, its performance deviates from well-accepted one-dimensional model simulation, such as Sage and Regen, mainly due to the strong field nonuniformity. In this study, several flow straighteners placed at both ends of the pulse tube are investigated to improve the flow distribution. A two-dimensional model of the pulse tube based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method has been built to study the flow distribution of the pulse tube with different flow straighteners including copper screens, copper slots, taper transition and taper stainless slot. A SPTC set-up which has more than one hundred Watts cooling power at 80 K has been built and tested. The flow straighteners mentioned above have been applied and tested. The results show that with the best flow straightener the cooling performance of the SPTC can be significantly improved. Both CFD simulation and experiment show that the straighteners have impacts on the flow distribution and the performance of the high capacity SPTC. (paper)