Movements and mechanical stresses in gas-filled flat plate solar collectors
Other conference contribution, 2008

Sealed gas filled flat plate solar collectors will have stresses in the material since volume and pressure varies in the gas when the temperature changes. Several geometries were analyzed and it could be seen that it is possible reducing the stresses and improve the safety factor of the weakest point in the construction by using larger area and/or reducing the distance between glass and absorber and/or change width and height relationship so the tubes are getting longer. Further it could be shown that the safety factor won't always get improved with reinforcements. It is so because when an already strong part of the collector gets reinforced it will expose weaker parts for higher stresses. The finite element method was used for finding out the stresses.

mechanical stresses

Inert gases

modelling

Solar collectors

Author

Johan Vestlund

Mats Rönnelid

Jan-Olof Dalenbäck

Chalmers, Energy and Environment, Building Services Engineering

Proceedings Eurosun 2008

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified

More information

Created

10/7/2017