The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 09, 1999
Filed:
Apr. 03, 1997
Antony Jalink, Jr, Newport News, VA (US);
Richard F Hellbaum, Hampton, VA (US);
Wayne W Rohrbach, Yorktown, VA (US);
Abstract
A Stirling-cycle refrigerator has a three-pump configuration and pumping sequence, in which one pump serves as a compressor, one pump serves as an expander, and one pump serves as a displacer. The pumps are ferroelectrically actuated diaphragm pumps which are coordinated by synchronizing the ferroelectric-actuator voltages in such a way that the net effect of the displacer is to reduce the deleterious effect of dead space; that is, to circulate a greater fraction of the working fluid through the heat exchangers than would be possible by use of the compressor and expander alone. In addition, the displacer can be controlled separately to make the flow of working fluid in the heat exchangers turbulent (to increase the rate of transfer of heat at the cost of greater resistance to flow) or laminar (to decrease the resistance to flow at the cost of a lower heat-transfer rate).