Performance Characteristics of Solar Air Heaters by using CFD Approach

In recent years CFD has been applied in the design of solar air heater. The studies reported that the quality of the solutions obtained from CFD simulations are largely within the acceptable range proving that CFD is an effective tool for predicting the behavior and performance of a solar air heater. The thermal performance of conventional solar air heater is lower as compared to that of corrugated absorbed plate solar air heaters. There are various types of corrugation like W-shape, V-shape; sine wave shape etc. can be used as absorbed plate. The use of corrugation in different forms and shapes is an effective and economic way of improving the performance of solar air heaters. Use of corrugated absorbed plate in solar air heater duct increases the Nusselt number and the friction factor with the increase in mass flow rates, the Nusselt number increases and the friction factor decreases for all combination of mass flow rates. In the present investigation the effect of flow parameters on flow field, temperature field and heat transfer has been analyzed.Also the comparison of the result obtained by the present CFD analysis with previous experimental results has been shown.