A08 Development of Stirling Cryocooler for a Superconducting Motor system

Abstract

In recent years, many efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of an electric vehicle. To improve the efficiency of an electric bus, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. has been developing a superconducting motor system. This project is intended to demonstrate that the efficiency of an electric bus can be improved by a superconducting motor system. In order to be competitive with a conventional motor, a highly efficient cryocooler is required. Thus, Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. developed a high-efficiency Stirling cryocooler for the purpose of cooling an HTS superconducting motor system. A prototype unit was developed and performance tests were conducted. The conceptual design of the system and the detailed experiment results will be reported in this paper.