Abstract
A basic pulse tube refrigerator has been constructed with extensive instrumentation to study the characteristics of the heat exchanger experimentally under the oscillating pressure and the oscillating flow. This paper describes the sequential experiments with the basic pulse tube refrigerator. The experiments were performed for various cycle frequencies under the square pressure wave forms. First, the heat flux was measured through the cycle at the both cold and warm end heat exchangers without the regenerator. In order to enhance the thermal communication capability of the heat exchanger with the gas at low operating frequencies, a unique design of the triangular shape radial fin concept was applied to the heat exchangers. For the fin heat exchanger, the measured heat flux and the calculated heat flux from the two well-known oscillating heat transfer correlations were compared and discussed. Second, the regenerator was added to the pulse tube to make a basic pulse tube refrigerator configuration. The experiment showed the great impact of the regenerator on the temperature and the heat flux profiles. At the warm-end, the cyclic averaged heat flux had its maximum value at the specific operating frequency. The paper presents the explanation of the surface heat pumping effect as well as the experimental data.
