Investigation of the inertance tube of a pulse tube refrigerator operating at high temperatures

1The cooling performance of an inertance pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) is dependent on the impedance at the warm end of the pulse tube provided by the inertance tube. The impedance is influenced by the temperature of the inertance tube. The operation of an inertance tube at a high temperature may be feasible in a PTR, and the effects of a high temperature inertance tube (HIT) on the cooling performance should be investigated. Using theoretical analysis, the dependence of the phase shift ability on the temperature is calculated and analysed. A numerical model of the PTR is built in which different temperatures of the inertance tube are considered to simulate the cooling performance of the PTR with different HITs. Increasing the temperature in the inertance tube decreases the phase shift ability, which weakens the cooling performance. By optimizing the length of the inertance tube, approximately 3.6% and 5.3% decreases in the total input PV power could be obtained for different cooling temperatures when the temperature of the HIT is set at 333 K. Experiments are performed to verify the simulation results.