Structural Design Criteria for Steel Components of Parabolic-Trough Solar Concentrators

Abstract

Starting from the R&D experience acquired, within the Italian context, in the field of the development of new technologies for solar energy exploitation, structural design criteria have been selected here to define a guideline for steel structures design and assessment of components of parabolic-trough solar concentrators. The main codes of practice used in Italy and in the European community have been considered and design criteria chosen to find a compromise between requirements of rules that should be followed precisely and costs. Loads, actions, and more generally, the whole design procedure has been considered in agreement with the limit state method; a new approach is critically and carefully proposed to use this method in designing and testing “special structures,” such as the one analyzed here (e.g., wind and snow actions are evaluated and newly interpreted according to both the angular position of the collectors and the characteristic effects). A method for evaluating variable loads is proposed to integrate current Italian and European rules, and a dimensional reduction for some elements due to the limit state design approach is underlined.

Thermal storage of sensible heat using concrete modules in solar power plants

“…Technologies and methods for thermal energy storage have been well tested in CSP -Concentrated Solar Power -plants (Giannuzzi et al, 2007;Salomoni et al, 2008). Solar tower plants (e.g.…”

Design and Optimization of Elliptical Cavity Tube Receivers in the Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

“…Due to the discontinuous, low energy flux, periodicity, and unsteady characteristics of solar energy, solar concentration is commonly utilized in solar engineering fields, among which the solar parabolic trough collectors (PTC) are the most widely accepted solar concentration style [1]. The light ray tracing [2][3][4] and structural analysis [5][6][7] for the PTC have been widely discussed in the literature.…”

Conceptual Study of a Thermal Storage Module for Solar Power Plants with Parabolic Trough Concentrators

“…With reference to Figure 5, temperature profiles of the material are reported along the channel axis; it is to be noticed that areas underlying the curves are proportional to the quantity of energy if we refer to Equation (1). According to this expression the component's storable energy is proportional to the existing ΔT between the condition of complete charge and discharge.…”

“…Technologies and methods for thermal energy storage have been well tested in CSP -Concentrated Solar Power -plants [1,2]. Solar tower plants (e.g.…”