Study on effects of wind velocity on thermal efficiency and heat dynamics of pavement solar collectors: An experimental and numerical study

摘要

Wind as an environmental condition plays a crucial role in the heat dynamics of pavement solar col-lectors (PSCs) and causes convective heat loss to the ambient. The major emphasis of the present study is to evaluate the effects of wind velocity on the thermal efficiency of glazed and unglazed PSCs. Since the wind velocity is a chaotic and random function, it is challenging to evaluate wind velocity effects experimentally. Therefore, a PSC prototype was constructed, and a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed and validated by the acquired experimental results. Then, the CFD model was employed to evaluate the wind velocity effects on the dynamics of PSCs. Three scenarios considering wind velocities in the ranges from 0 m/s to 20 m/s were assumed, and the dynamics of the constructed glazed and unglazed PSCs were monitored. The obtained results illustrated that by increasing wind velocity from 0 m/s to 20 m/s, the maximum outlet water temperature decreases by near 25% and 10% for the unglazed PSC and glazed one, respectively. The validated numerical model shows that increasing wind velocity caused the thermal performance to be reduced by around 68% and 25% for the unglazed and glazed PSCs, respectively. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.