A Stirling-type pulse tube cryocooler （PTC） with precooling was designed and manufactured to investigate its performance at 4 K. Numerical simulation was carried out based on the well-known regenerator model REGEN with an emphasis on the performance of a 4 K stage regenerator of the Stifling-type PTC as influenced by the warm end temperature, pressure ratio, frequency and average pressure with helium-4 and helium-3 as the working fluid respectively. This study demonstrates that the use of a cold inertance tube can significantly improve the efficiency of a 4 K Stirling-type PTC. A preliminary experimental investigation was carried out with helium-4 as the working fluid and a refrigeration temperature of 4.23 K was achieved. The experimental results show that the operating frequency has a significant influence on the performance of the Stirling-type PTC and a relatively low average pressure is favorable for decreasing the loss associated with the real gas effects of a 4 K Stirling-type PTC.
A single stage Stifling pulse tube cryocooler was designed based on REGEN 3.2 and fabricated for testing. The experimental results show that the cooler can provide a cooling capacity of 5.0 W at 79.1 K, and produce a no-load temperature of 57.0 K, operating with an average pressure of 2.50 MPa and a frequency of 60 Hz, performance results that are very close to the calculated values. The cryocooler can be cooled from room temperature to 80 K in 8.5 min. The fast cooldown time is a result of the small regenerator.
