Using CFD, analyze solar air heaters with and without fins

Abstract

The use of CFD code to obtain detailed information about the flow field will aid in comprehending the behavior of the fins in various scenarios and, consequently, suggest potential modifications for the solar air heater. This paper conducts a preliminary validation of the CFD methodology for a subset of 3-D cases. After that, the study is expanded to examine the effectiveness of solar air heaters in various scenarios. Each time, CAD software is used to create a 3-D model of the Solar Air Heater, which is then imported into Gambit, a pre-processor of Fluent CFD-code, where a computational domain is created to simulate temperature flow around the model. A structured grid is used to mesh the computational domain. The file is saved as a mesh file and appropriate boundary condition types are assigned. To conduct the CFD analysis and forecast the behavior of the Solar Air Heater model, this mesh file is exported to Fluent. To determine how the slope angle affects the collector's performance, a two-phase CFD analysis is conducted. A 45º collector slope angle was selected for phase. Given the ideal solar gain for latitude 24º, a slope of 24º was chosen for the second phase.