Three-dimensional Analysis of Air Flow in a Flat Plate Solar Collector

Abstract

This paper presents the study of fluid flow and heat transfer in solar flat plate collector by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) which reduces time and cost. In the present paper the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool has been used to simulate the solar collector for better understanding the heat transfer capability. 3D model of the collector involving air inlet, the collector is modeled by ANSYS Workbench and the grid was created in ANSYS ICEM. The results were obtained by using ANSYS FLUENT and ANSYS CFX. The objective of this work is to compare theoretically and experimentally work done with the work done by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool with respect to flow and temperature distribution inside the solar collector. The outlet temperature of air is compared with experimental results and there is a good agreement in between them.