A Comparative Analysis of Rhombus Shaped Ribs in Solar Air Heater

Abstract

In this article, heat transfer and flow behavior was analyzed in rectangular solar air heater duct. The absorber plate of the solar air heater (SAH) was attached with rhombus-shaped ribs with varying rib height. The finding of this problem was done with a computational exercise in ANSYS Fluent R22 by varying dimensionless parameters like Reynolds number (4000-18000), and relative roughness height (e/D h ) , (0.030-0.042) by keeping constant pitch distance (P=10mm). A two-dimensional domain was taken to study, with uniform heat supplied of 1000 W/m 2 over an absorber plate made up of aluminum. From various turbulence models, the RNG 𝑘 − 𝜀 model was chosen for simulating the fluid flow equations (mass, momentum, and energy). The result showed that Nusselt number increases with increasing Reynolds number (Re) and found maximum heat augment occurs at Re=10,000.