Professional Documents
Culture Documents
00
Printed in the U.S.A. ~: 1985 Pergamon Press Ltd.
J. L. A. FRANCEYand J. PAPAIOANNOU
Physics Department, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3168, Australia
(Received 2 August 1983: revision received 3 December 1984; accepted 21 January 1985)
Abstract--The heat loss from a flat-plate solar collector is measured over a range of inlet temperatures.
tilt angles and wind velocities while operating in a wind tunnel. The measurements are compared wilh
recent empirical relations for calculating top losses. While there is good agreement for zero or low
wind velocities, the calculations appear to underestimate the top loss when wind velocities exceed
about I ms-~.
Fig. I. The collector on the tilting rig. The rig is constructed from 2.5-cm square section steel tube.
Inset: The plate temperature measuring thermocouples. These are attached by a light coating of epoxy
resin and covered by sticky tape.
? s
3
I I
2 I l , j
2
8 16 ~ 32 Wind
Plate-Ambient T e m p e r a t u r e ('12)
Fig. 4. Forced convection top loss as a function of wind
Fig, 2. Free convection top loss as a function of plate- speed (AT = 28C). Measured at 10 o tilt x ;
ambient temperature. Measured x ; Measured at 55 tilt A A ; Predicted at 10 tilt
Predicted . . . . . . . O O ; Predicted at 55 t i l t - - ~
Wind-related heat losses of a flat-plate collector 17
using the expression due to Agarwal and Larson[3] It can be seen that the agreement is quite good
over the range of temperatures tested. For a fixed
(T v - 1",) of 28C, Fig. 3 shows the variation of Ut
N 1
with tilt angle S, and it can be seen that the expres-
Ut
'- t g l
%o..
1' sion (3) predicts this small variation well. For Figs.
2 and 3 hw in equation (3) was taken as 2.8
~ ( T . + T.)(T~ + T~) W m - 2K- t.
For the forced convection tests in the wind tun-
2N+ f- 1]
[% + 0.05N(I - %,)]- i + - N nel some of the data obtained are presented in Table
Ee 1 below and in Fig. 4. It can be seen that for wind
(3) speeds above 1 ms-~ the top loss as predicted by
Agarwal and Larson[3] is low by as much as 40%.
where The predicted top loss decreases with wind speed
while measurements indicate the opposite. In cal-
f = (1 - 0.04 hw + 0.005h.?)(l + 0.091N), culating the top loss from equation (3) the expres-
C = 250 [1 - 0.0044 (S - 90)], sion of Sparrow et al.[8] was used to find h,, the
h . = convective heat transfer coefficient due to convective heat loss due to wind. By comparison
wind (Win - 2 C- i ), the expression for h,,, due to Watmuffet al.[9] would
N = number of cover plates, % = cover have produced even worse results, as is shown in
emissivity, Fig. 5.
cr = Stefan-Boltzmannconstant = 5.6 10 -8 All the foregoing results refer to the wind inci-
Wm-2K- 4 dent at 90 to the collector, that is, head on. Some
Table 1. Measured and predicted [A-L] top loss as functions of wind speed and tilt
1 30 25 4.88 5.00
1 55 12 4.34 3.88
1 55 25 4.75 4.66
2 lO 12 4.47 5.50
2 lO 25 4.95 6.30
2 30 12 4.38 5.52
2 30 25 4.86 6.32
2 55 12 4.28 4.59
2 55 25 4.71 5.45
3 lO 12 4.25 5.93
3 lO 25 4.74 6.83
3 55 12 4.04 5.27
3 55 25 4.47 5.87
4 30 12 3.84 6.72
4 30 25 4.31 7.43
5 30 12 3.50 6.50
5 30 25 3.94 7.55
5 55 12 3.38 5.77
5 55 25 3.77 6.30
18 J. L. A. FRANCEYand J. PAPAIOANNOU
S V AT Ut(=0 ) Ut(=540 )
I0 I 20 6.2 6.35
2 19 6.59 7.91
3 21 7.1 8.1
4 18 7.2 9.1
5 18 7.5 11.2
30 1 21 6.3 6.0
2 18 6.6 7.9
3 20 6.9 7.5
4 18 7.2 8.4
5 17 7.4 7.8
55 I 19 6.1 6.0
2 18 6.5 6.9
3 18 6.8 7.2
4 17 7.1 7.8
5 17 7.2 7.2
tests were c o n d u c t e d with the collector rotated by p e r f o r m a n c e of flat plate collectors, and perhaps
54 from head on, and these results are shown in more fundamental changes to the expression (3) are
Table 2. It can be seen that there is a significant needed. In particular, no account is taken in (3) of
increase in the top loss particularly at low elevation the wind incident angle, and the m e a s u r e m e n t s in-
angles. dicate that this factor is important. In practice, col-
lectors are often set to face north (or south) at geo-
graphic locations where winds have large e a s t - w e s t
DISCUSSION
c o m p o n e n t s , and this aspect of wind-related heat
It seems that the expression (3) does not account losses needs much further investigation.
for wind-related heat losses from collectors. The As mentioned a b o v e , the wind speed o v e r the
first term in (3) appears to be dominant at least in surface of the collector was measured during the
this work. and it is possible to alter (3) so as to give tests. Wind speeds near the bottom were found to
good a g r e e m e n t with the m e a s u r e m e n t s by altering be lower than the free wind speed, while wind
the e x p o n e n t 0.33 in this first term. The present speeds near the top were higher than the free wind
w o r k shows that the e x p o n e n t needs to be a func- speed. The finite thickness of the collector presents
tion of both wind speed and of collector tilt angle. a blunt leading edge to the wind and presumably
Empirically determined values for the e x p o n e n t e produces turbulent flow o v e r the surface. This tur-
are bulence is thought to lead to an increase in the heat
loss at the surface. The turbulent flow region on the
f o r S = I0 , e -- 0.09 + 0.32V - 0.03V-'. collector appears to be larger at small tilt angles,
S = 30 , e = -I.0 + 1.96V - 0.83V-', leading to a d e c r e a s e in the heat loss coefficient as
S = 55 , e ---- - 0 . 0 2 + 0.20V - 0.03V -~. the collector is raised more toward the vertical.
Again further investigation is needed.
E v e n with this allowance for the variation of e, It has been pointed out (by a referee) that the
eqn (3) is not a satisfactory way of predicting the expression f in equation (3) is incorrect and that
Wind-related heat losses of a flat-plate collector 19
4 6
f = (I + 0.04 h,, + 0.0005 h,,-')(l + 0,09IN).
P
? 5
This change does not alter any of the conclusions
4 of this w o r k and in fact leads to smaller values of
the top loss coefficients predicted by eqn (3). F o r
5 e x a m p l e at a wind speed of 5 m s - ' the " c o r r e c t e d "
I I I I predicted heat loss coefficient is 20% less than that
8 16 2/, 32
Plate-Ambient Temperature (C) reported here.