A basic pulse tube refrigerator has been constructed with extensive instrumentation to study heat transfer characteristic experimentally in the oscillating pressure and oscillating flow. The thesis describes sequential experiments of the basic pulse tube refrigerator development. First, the phase shift between the instantaneous heat flux and the gas-wall temperature difference was observed in the pulse tube apparatus without the regenerator. The heat flux was continuously measured through the cycle at the wall of both the cold-end and warm-end heat exchangers. The expehment was performed for various cycle frequencies from 0.2 Hz to 2 Hz with square pressure wave forms. The duration of the high pressure period was also changed to examine its effect on the heat transfer characteristic. The experimental results were compared to the theoretical analysis of the oscillating pressure and the oscillating flow. Second, the regenerator was added to the pulse tube to make a basic pulse tube refrigerator configuration. The experiment showed the great impact of the regenerator on the temperature and the heat flux profiles. Since the performance of the pulse tube refrigerator directly depends on the oscillating heat transfer phenomena, a unique design of the triangular shape radial fin concept was applied in the heat exchangers to minimize thermal contact resistance. This thesis also presents the experimental comparison of the new heat exchanger and the traditional screen-type one.
