CFD based performance analysis and correlation development for solar air heater having ribs.

The effectiveness of a solar air heater (SAH) can be enhanced by applying ribs on the absorbing surface. To measure the heat transfer (HT) rate, and friction factor (fr) the ribbed solar heater is designed with combination of square and triangular ribs. To improve the performance of SAH, the findings of comparative research of smooth and rough SAH are presented in this article. In this research work a computational study of HT enhancement and fluid flow (FF) behaviors of a SAH having proposed ribs arranged in a different fashion are presented. The details of HT and FF behaviors due to periodic ribs have been analyzed using CFD. The analysis was performed with the V2f model in ANSYS 16 software. Present computational investigation was done for different P/e values and Re ranging from 3800 to 18,000. The result showed that the proposed rib with lower pitch gives the highest Nur at Re=18,000. A correlation for the Nur is also formed in this research article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]