10 W/90 K single-stage pulse tube cryocoolers

A single-stage 10 W/90 K coaxial pulse tube cryocooler has been developed for space-borne optics cooling. The design considerations are described, and the optimizations on the double-segmented inertance tubes are presented. The preliminary engineering model (EM) of the cooler has been worked out, which typically provides the cooling of 10 W at 90 K with the input power of 175.6 W at 310 K reject temperature, and achieves around 14% of Carnot efficiency at 90 K. The reject temperature dependence experiments on the EM show a smaller slope of 10.2 W/10 K and indicate a good adaptability to the reject temperature range from 290 K to 333 K. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.