CFD Simulation of a Small Stirling Cryocooler

Abstract

The application of cryocoolers has advanced in various fields of modern day applications because of adequate refrigeration at specified temperature with low power input, high reliability, long lifetime, and light weight. The demand of Stirling cryocoolers has increased due to the ineffectiveness of Rankine cooling systems at lower temperatures and with the advancement in applications of Stirling cryocoolers, several simulations of such cryocoolers were also developed. These simulations saved a lot of time and money as it could provide an accurate analysis of the performance of the cryocooler before actually manufacturing it. At present, design issues of mini cryocooers are given more serious consideration for its applications in various fields. There are large and diverse applications of cryogenic technology and very often a new application is added to the list. Here, in this project, an attempt has been made to formulate a CFD simulation of a stirling cryocooler. This project deals with a new type of numerical computational fluid dynamic (CFD) approach of making more realistic to the porous media inside the regenerator of a stirling refrigerator. The available commercial software package FLUENT for solving Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has capable of define a porous media and solve the governing equation for this region. A detailed analysis has been done of the simulation of the cryocooler in the results and discussion section.