Sensitivity analysis in the test of a parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC) with flat null-screens

In this work we proposed a flat null-screen method to test parabolic trough solar collectors (PTSC). The null-screen testing method measures the slope of the test surface and by a numerical integration procedure the shape of the test surface can be obtained. In this work, we show that the test can be sensitive to small surface deformations, such as those caused by sinusoidal deformations with different amplitudes and spatial periods introduced on the PTSC surface. These calculations also show that the attainable theoretical slope accuracy in the rms sense is about 0.34 mrad. This value was obtained under the assumption that is possible to achieve a 1-pixel resolution on the measurement of the position departures of the centroids of the targets of the null-screen.