Shaowei Zhu of Aisin Seiki Co, Ltd., has been given the “Industry Technology Achievement Award” by the Cryogenic Society of Japan. The award was outlined in Vol.44, No. 6 of the Society’s Journal.
Dr. Zhu was part of a team of international researchers responsible for a major contribution to the basic formation of the development of pulse tube refrigerators. The pulse tube refrigerator can be classified into three generations based on the phase angle between the mass flow and the pressure oscillation at the warm end of the pulse tube. Dr. Zhu invented the double inlet pulse tube refrigerator, which is the first model of a third generation refrigerator with similar performance to the Stirling refrigerator and the G-M refrigerator. His results pointed to increased potential for the pulse tube cryocooler. In addition, Mr. Zhu designed the “actively buffer method”, the most efficient current method, and proved the possibility of a large scale refrigerator with high efficiency.
