|
Thales Cryogenics has an extensive background in delivering reliable linear and rotary coolers for military, civil and
space programs. Recent work carried out at detector level enable to consider a higher operation temperature for the
cooled detectors. This has a direct impact on the cooling power required to the cryocooler. In continuation of the work
presented last year, Thales cryogenics has studied the operation and optimization of the rotary cryocoolers at high cold
regulation temperature. In this paper, the performances of the Thales Cryogenics rotary cryocoolers at elevated cold
regulation temperature will be presented. From these results, some trade-offs can be made to combine correct operation
of the cryocooler on all the ambient operational range and maximum efficiency of the cryocooler. These trade-offs and
the impact on MTTF of elevated cold regulation temperature will be presented and discussed. In correlation with the
increase of the cold operation temperature, the cryocooler input power is significantly decreased. As a consequence, the
cooler drive electronics own consumption becomes relatively important and must be reduced in order to minimize global
input power to the cooling function (cryocooler and cooler drive electronics). Thales Cryogenics has developed a new
drive electronics optimized for low input power requirements. In parallel, improvements on RM1 and RM2 cryocoolers
have been defined and implemented. The main impacts on performances of these new designs will be presented. Thales
cryogenics is now able to propose an efficient cooling function for application requiring a high cold regulation
temperature including a range of tuned rotary coolers.
|
