Determination of cell reaching solar flux/temperature with AcuSolve
Dear Experts,
My objective is to make a thermal analysis of a photovoltaic panel like in the paper I have attached. This panel shall be exposed to a irradiance of 1000 W/m^2 (in negative z-Direction) for 60 seconds at an ambient temperature of 25°C. The target values are the cell reaching solar flux (solar irradiance) and the temperature at the solar cell.
I work with Hypermesh 2019 and the AcuSolve user profile. My procedure was similar to the tutorial ACU-T 3201 (Greenhouse Daytime Simulation): I have already defined the problem description and auto solution strategy, model propoerties and solar radiation models, applied volume parameters and meshed the panel with 1 mm tetra-volume elements.
When I run the Acu Solve Job Lauchner and open the results in Hyperview afterwards, no results are displayed.
Now to my questions:
Is it possible to run a simulation with Acusolve without fluid (only solids) in the system?
How do I define contact conditions like free convection with the environment or conduction?
Do I need an emissivity model like in ACU-T 3200?
Do I need to determine surface groups?
I have also attached the Hypermesh file so to give you an idea of my simulation model.
Thanks in advance! I would be extremely grateful about a help.
Answers
-
Short answers for now, as I cannot open the HM right now.
1. Yes you can use AcuSolve without fluid. You can define Material_Type= solid for Air. This will essentially create a 'solid' with properties of air, however only conduction will take place.
2. Contact definition between two surface is default Flux = 0. This means that there is prefect contact between two surfaces and conduction will take place without any thermal resistant (like air gaps or glue).
If you need to define free convection, then all AcuSolve preProcessors have options to define those as well.
0 -
Thank you @ydigit for the answer!
I managed to simulate a temperature distribution in a simple solid plate which is supposed to solar flux. I applied the following conditions to all external surfaces:
However, I did not define as air as a material or 'solid'. Are these conditions still adequate to simulate the heat exchange (conduction, convection) with an ambient medium or do I have to model air especially?
And should I have to model a cuboid with air as static fluid, does the program automatically recognize that where there is a solid, there can't be fluid, or do I have to define that specifically?
Thanks in advance!
0 -
However, I did not define as air as a material or 'solid'. Are these conditions still adequate to simulate the heat exchange (conduction) with an ambient medium or do I have to model air especially?
It is adequate to simulate without external air, if you use the BCs above.
And should I have to model a cuboid with air as static fluid, does the program automatically recognize that where there is a solid, there can't be fluid, or do I have to
define that specifically?
You have to define explicitly mediums for all volumes.
0 -
Thanks again @ydigit for the answer!
I managed now to set up a thermal simulation on a PV panel. I have another two questions for setting up boundary conditions:
1.) Is there any difference in computation between setting the convecting heat flux to 0.00 W/m^2K or disabling the simple boundary conditions option for the corresponding surface?
2.) When I want to include radiative heat exchange between the surfaces of the different layers and the surroundings from my PV Panel. Am I right with activating the enclosure radiation option and defining an emissivity model for each particular surface? I read somewhere, that an emissivity model is only valid, when there is a fluid in the domain and in my simulation I will not define a fluid, like we discussed before.
3.) Is there any option to extract the cell reaching solar irradiance [W/m^2] in the postprocessor (Hyperview)
Maybe @Rahul Ponginan could help me with this issue too.
0
Altair Employee