CFD based performance analysis of solar air heater provided with artificial roughness in the form of V - Shaped ribs

The current study comprises of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of solar air heater integrated with V-shaped ribs on the absorber plate with artificial roughness. The investigation of various fluid flow properties namely flow behaviour, temperature distribution and velocity distribution are performed using Renormalization group (RNG) k-epsilon turbulent model. The turbulence intensity of 5% is considered to investigate the mentioned fluid flow properties by considering the relative roughness height (e/D) range between 0.02 and 0.04, relative roughness pitch (P/e) as 10 and angle of attack (alpha) from 30 degrees to 90 degrees. The working parameters namely Reynolds number (Re) and intensity of solar radiations ranges from 2500 to 18,000 and 1000 W/m(2) respectively. The direction and intensity of solar radiations are monitored by using Discrete Ordination (DO) model. The effective efficiency (eta(eff)) for different values of relative roughness height is analysed theoretically using the heat energy balance equation keeping relative roughness pitch as constant. The results indicated maximum effective efficiency as 74% for Reynolds number and relative roughness height values of 14,000 and 0.034 respectively. Copyright (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.