CFD SIMULATION OF HEAT TRANSFER THROUGH A ABSORBER PLATE OF SOLAR AIR HEATER WITH ARTIFICIAL ROUGHNESS

Abstract

Solar energy is abundantly available and its use in various applications has always been of great interest among the common man, designer, engineer and researchers. One of the applications among several is in heating of air. Hot air is of use in domestic and industrial purposes. The efficiency of any solar air heater can be understood as the ability of the solar air heater to transfer the heat from the absorber plate where the solar radiations are absorbed to the air flowing over this. Since the heat transfer is affected by the surface of the absorber plate, study of surface conditions becomes essential for improving the efficiency of the heater. Many researchers have done several studies for the improvement of the heat transfer from the absorber plate to the air. In this paper, the authors have simulated the heat transfer from an absorber plate in which artificial roughness elements are provided. The simulation results show that the heat transfer is improving because of the turbulence development near the surface of the absorber plate. The temperature and velocity contours have been presented in this paper. Temperature, velocity, heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number plots for the absorber plate are also shown.