Performance enhancement of a miniature stirling cryocooler with a multi mesh regenerator design

A parametric study has been carried out using the software regen 3.3 to optimize the regenerator of a miniature stirling cryocooler operating with a warm end temperature of 300 k and cold end temperature of 80 k. regenerator designs which produce the maximum coefficient of performance (cop) of the system is considered as an optimized regenerator. the length and diameter of the regenerator were fixed from the cooler system requirements. single mesh regenerators made of 200,250,300,400 and 450 stainless steel wire meshes were considered and the optimum phase angle and mesh size were obtained. a maximum cop of 0.1475 was obtained for 300 mesh regenerator at 70° phase angle. then multi mesh regenerators were considered with finer mesh on the cold end and coarser mesh on the hot end. the optimum size and length of each mesh in the multi mesh regenerator and the optimum phase angle were calculated. the maximum cop of 0.156 was obtained for 200-300-400 multi mesh regenerator at 70° phase angle. the cop and net refrigeration obtained for an optimized multi mesh regenerator was found to be significantly higher than that of a single mesh regenerator. thus a multi mesh regenerator design with a proper combination of regenerator mesh size and length can enhance the regenerator effectiveness. © school of engineering,taylor’s university.