Abstract
In this paper, a noble method for rapid cooldown of pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) was proposed and experimentally investigated. An orifice pulse tube refrigerator generates refrigeration effect by expansion PV work at the cold-end, and its amount is affected by the orifice valve opening. There exists the optimum valve opening for maximum cooling capacity and it varies as cold-end temperature. It is verified from simulation results using isothermal model that the optimum valve opening increases as the cold-end temperature increases. In the experiments, a single stage orifice pulse tube refrigerator is fabricated and tested. The fabricated PTR shows 97.5 K of no-load temperature and 10 W at 110 K of cooling capacity with the fixed orifice valve opening. From experiments, the initial cooldown curve with four cases of valve opening control scenario are obtained. And it is experimentally verified that the initial cooldown time can be reduced through the control of orifice valve opening.