JANUARY 24, 2014

HEAT FLUX SIMULATION ON SOLAR BATCH

COLLECTOR (SOLAR GEYZER) USING ABAQUS

MUHAMMAD WAQAS
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
COLLEGE OF ELECTRICAL & MECHANICAL ENGINEERING (EME), NUST

FINAL YEAR PROJECT:

Design and Development of Solar Batch Collector (Water geyzar) was selected as a final year
project which demand the mathematical modeling of equations for the determination of outlet
temperature of water. This temperature will be determined by keeping the capacity of tank
constant and by altering solar radiations at different instants of year. As the tank surface is
cylindrical so different solar radiations will be incident on it from different directions which
needs to be taken into account while calculating the total heat absorbed, later used for
determination of temperature. Furthermore addition of curved reflectors at the bottom surface
of spherical tank as it will also incident different solar radiations on cylindrical tank at different
angles after reflection. A complete nodal analysis of conductive, convective and radiative heat
transfer at any instant of year will be performed and will be mathematically modeled on
MATLAB. This mathematical model will then be verified by the fabrication of model and by
comparing the experimental and theoretical temperature.

CAE Project Synopsis:

This sub-project of final year project revolves around the simulation of heat transfer through
radiation in our model of solar batch collector. Apart from it multiple results are to be
diagnosed such as temperature at different instant using convective heat transfer around the
boundaries of solar batch collector. This simulation of heat transfer will be performed in
software ABACUS.

Introduction:
As the Final year project is in the very initial stages, currently in the literature review of solar
thermal analysis. The design which currently has been suggested is an insulated box, holding a
hollow cylindrical tank of high thermal conductivity. Moreover a glass plate will be installed at
the top of insulted box which will incident solar radiations on the tank. Two pipes at the end of
cylindrical tank are provided as the inlet and outlet of water. At later stages we intend to model
batch collector with the reflectors at the bottom of solar tank.

Simulation on ABAQUS:
1. Parts Modeling:
For the modeling of batch collector its parts were modeled first. These parts are:
a. Insulated Box
b. Cylindrical Tank
c. Inlet & Outlet Pipes

d. Upper transparent plate

e. Cylindrical Tank covers
These parts were modeled separately with the simple extrusion command.

2. Material Assignment:
These parts were then assigned Material. Firstly these materials were added in ABAQUS as per
the requirement of thermal analysis. Thermal conductivities of each material were added.
Parts assigned different materials are:
Insulated Box

Insulation

Cylindrical Tank

Steel

Upper Transparent Plate

Glass

Inlet/Outlet Pipes

Steel

3. Assembly:
After assigning material to each instance, these instances were then imported in Assembly and
each of them was translated or rotated as per the requirement of the model.

Here is the parts assembly:

4. Loads:
Boundary Conditions at outer and inner surfaces of models were applied. Various initial
temperatures at each surface served as boundary condition. Body heat at the upper plate was
applied too.
Insulated Box

Initial Temp

Cylindrical Tank

Initial Temp

Upper Plate

Body flux, Initial Temp

Inlet/Outlet Pipes

Initial Temp

5. Mesh:
After the application of boundary conditions and flux, assembly was meshed as per the
requirement of thermal analysis. Inlet pipe was meshed with triangular seed because of the
small inner radius.

6. Analysis:
Steady state analysis was then run to find out the temperature variation at different nodal
values on the application of heat flux.

7. Results:
It was deduced that with every instant on the application of heat flux at the upper surface of
model, the temperature of all the surfaces of model changes simultaneously. This allows us to
find out the temperature at any instant at any surface of model.

Future Work:
Future work of this project includes the mathematical coding of thermal co-efficient U at any
instant of the year for the determination of total heat absorbed by the cylindrical surface.
Addition of solar radiations with the addition of reflectors will also be accountable in thermal
nodal analysis. With this modeling a development of solar batch collector will be the next step
for experimental verification.