Design and Performance Evaluation of AIr Solar Channels With Diverse Baffle Structures

We conducted a detailed analysis of the baffle design and its impact on the convective phenomenon of heat transfer inside a solar air channel. Several differently shaped baffles [i.e., arc, cascaded, corrugated, diamond, rectangular (simple), trapezoidal, triangular, V-downstream, V-upstream, double V, and Z-shaped] with the same flow conditions were compared in a staggered manner. Our purpose is to explore the effect of these baffle geometries on the steady turbulent forced-convection flow behaviors inside a two-dimensional horizontal rectangular cross section channel. The thermo-aeraulic aspects are presented for Reynolds numbers based on the aeraulic diameter of the channel ranging from 12 × 103 to 32 × 103. The governing flow equations with the thermo-aerodynamic boundary conditions were solved by the finite volume method using the commercial CFD software FLUENT. The result analysis shows that the V-upstream–type baffle is the best design, which significantly decreases the skin friction loss, giving thus an augmentation in the thermal enhancement factor from 11.855 to 25.397% compared to the simple baffle.