Three-Dimensional Analysis of a Concentrated Solar Flux

Abstract

In order to improve the durability of receivers used in solar concentrating systems, it is necessary to minimize thermal stress during their operation. A possible way to do that is to design receivers in which the radiative flux density is homogeneous at the surface. For this reason, a detailed 3D study has been carried out for the distribution of concentrated solar radiation in the focal zone of a parabolic concentrator. A computer program has been developed to obtain isosurfaces of solar irradiance and achieve a homogeneous radiation flux on the receiver surface. The algorithm of the program proposes a methodology to obtain flux isosurfaces for a great variety of optical configurations. The effect of the optical errors on the mirror surface has been studied, as well as the effect of the shape of the mirror, e.g., round, square, or faceted. The numerical calculations were made using the convolution ray tracing technique.

A concise overview of heliostat fields-solar thermal collectors: Current state of art and future perspective

“…Based on the classification given by Garcia et al, the first group of codes are capable of precisely calculate the thermal and optical performances of the field. There are quite a few codes that can be utilized for heliostat field thermal and optical analysis including HELIOS , MIRVAL, ASAP, OPTEC, SOLTRACE, Fiat Lux, SOLVER, TONATIUH, Raytraces3D, CRS4, SOLFAST, STRAL, SPRAY (MIRVAL), HOpS, and ISOS …”

Heliostat image drift behavior for different error sources

“…Strictly speaking, the image centroid does not necessarily coincide with the central ray. Therefore, some comparisons were carried against ray tracing simulations with the program Tonalli (Riveros-Rosas et al, 2008;Riveros-Rosas et al, 2010), in order to evaluate the apparent drift due to this difference.…”

Investigation of the Effect of Physical and Optical Factors on the Optical Performance of a Parabolic Trough Collector

“…The experimental investigations apply photogrammetry [3][4][5] and flux mapping [6,7], and theoretical studies apply cone optics [8][9][10] and Monte Carlo ray tracing [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Very few of these publications extensively addressed the effects of collector design and optical error parameters extensively on the optical performance parameters.…”